Sonnet CLXII:
If it has been the misery of my fate
To mix too closely with the knave and fool,
In these sad years which adverse planets rule)
And on whose hours degrading furies wait;
’Twas not my pleasure, but my luckless state,
That made me frowning fortune’s luckless tool,
And taught me manners in so vile a school
That I have caught the scoundrel’s slouching gait.
Mistake me not. The flicker of my eye,
The look of cunning, the distrustful smile,
But serve my turn when guile encounters guile.
Before thy candor, I would blush to try
The masker’s antic, or the liar’s wile,
Or aught at which you shake the head and sigh.
