| THY gift, thy tables, are within my brain | |
| Full character’d with lasting memory, | |
| Which shall above that idle rank remain, | |
| Beyond all date, even to eternity: | |
| Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart | 5 |
| Have faculty by nature to subsist; | |
| Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part | |
| Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d. | |
| That poor retention could not so much hold, | |
| Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score; | 10 |
| Therefore to give them from me was I bold, | |
| To trust those tables that receive thee more: | |
| To keep an adjunct to remember thee | |
| Were to import forgetfulness in me. |