8

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:

Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,

By unions married do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:

Mark how one string sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;

Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,

Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

  Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,

  Sings this to thee, ‘Thou single wilt prove none’.

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