Synopsis:

The poet acknowledges that the very fact that his love has grown makes his earlier poems about the fullness and constancy of his love into lies.

 
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
4My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in ’twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
8Divert strong minds to th’ course of alt’ring things—
Alas, why, fearing of time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say “Now I love you best,”
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
12Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
 Love is a babe. Then might I not say so,
 To give full growth to that which still doth grow.

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