The poem
Image of her whom I love, more than she, Whose fair impression in my faithful heart Makes me her medal, and makes her love me, As Kings do coins, to which their stamps impart The value: go, and take my heart from hence, Which now is grown too great and good for me: Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.
When you are gone, and Reason gone with you, Then Fantasy is queen and soul, and all; She can present joys meaner than you do; Convenient, and more proportional. So, if I dream I have you, I have you, For, all our joys are but fantastical. And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true; And sleep which locks up sense, doth lock out all.
After a such fruition I shall wake, And, but the waking, nothing shall repent; And shall to love more thankful sonnets make Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent. But dearest heart, and dearer image, stay; Alas, true joys at best are dream enough; Though you stay here you pass too fast away: For even at first life's taper is a snuff.
Filied with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.