Sonnet CLXI:
I never courted miser, fool or knave;
Nor held my heart up as a thing to sell
In open market, with the crier’s bell
To tell the world the cheapness of the slave.
Though I have ceased to imprecate and rave
Against the horrors of the sordid hell
In which my fellows roll—as knowing well
That God’s own voice has lost the power to save—
Yet in that I have kept my conscience white,
Defying meanness wheresoe’er I met
Its brazen brows in darkened counsel set,
Thou may’st regard me with a glance less light
Than these ignoble things thou would’st forget,
And hold me higher in thy lofty sight.
