So should that beauty which you hold in lease

  Find no determination; then you were

  Yourself again after yourself’s decease,

  When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

  Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

  Which husbandry in honour might uphold

  Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day

  And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?

  O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know:

  You had a father; let your son say so.

  14

  Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;

  And yet, methinks, I have astronomy,

  But not to tell of good or evil luck,

  Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;

  Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

  Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind;

  Or say with princes if it shall go well

  By aught predict that I in heaven find;

  But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

  And, constant stars, in them I read such art

  As truth and beauty shall together thrive

  If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert:

  Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

  Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.

  15

  When I consider everything that grows

  Holds in perfection but a little moment;

  That this huge stage presenteth naught but shows

  Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

  When I perceive that men as plants increase,

  Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,

  Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

  And wear their brave state out of memory:

  Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

  Sets you, most rich in youth, before my sight,

  Where wasteful time debateth with decay

  To change your day of youth to sullied night:

  And all in war with time for love of you

  As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

  16

  But wherefore do not you a mightier way

  Make war upon this bloody tyrant, time,

  And fortify yourself in your decay

  With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?

  Now stand you on the top of happy hours,

  And many maiden gardens, yet unset,

  With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,

  Much liker than your painted counterfeit:

  So should the lines of life that life repair,

  Which this, time’s pencil or my pupil pen,

  Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,

  Can make you live yourself in eyes of men:

  To give away yourself keeps yourself still,

  And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.

  17

  Who will believe my verse in time to come,

  If it were filled with your most high deserts?

  Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb,

  Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:

  If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

  And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

  The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;

  Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’

  So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

  Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,

  And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage,

  And stretched metre of an antique song;

  But were some child of yours alive that time,

  You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.

  18

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

  Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

  And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

  And every fair from fair sometime declines,

  By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed:

  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

  Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

  Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade

  When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

  19

  Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,

  And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

  Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,

  And burn the long-lived Phoenix in her blood;

  Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,

  And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed time,

  To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

  But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,

  O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,

  Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

  Him in thy course untainted do allow

  For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.

  Yet do thy worst, old Time, despite thy wrong,

  My love shall in my verse ever live young.

  20

  A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted

  Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

  A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

  With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

  An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

  Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

  A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,

  Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth;

  And for a woman wert thou first created,

  Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

  And by addition me of thee defeated,

  By adding one thing to my purpose nothing:

  But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,

  Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

  21

  So is it not with me as with that Muse,

  Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,

  Who heaven itself for ornament doth use,

  And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

  Making a couplement of proud compare

  With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems;

  With April’s first-born flowers and all things rare

  That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems;

  O let me true in love but truly write,

  And then believe me: my love is as fair

  As any mother’s child, though not so bright

  As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air:

  Let them say more that like of hearsay well,

  I will not praise, that purpose not to sell.

  22

  My glass shall not persuade me I am old

  So long as youth and thou are of one date;

  But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,

  Then look I death my days should expiate:

  For all that beauty that doth cover thee

  Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

  Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me;

  How can I then be elder than thou art?

  O therefore love be of thyself so wary

  As I not for myself, but for thee will,

  Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary

  As tender nurse her babe from faring ill:

  Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;

  Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

  23

  As an unperfect actor on the stage,

  Who with his fear is put besides his part;

  Or some fierce thing, replete with too much rage,

  Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;

  So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

  The perfect ceremony of love’s right,

  And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,

  O’ercharged with burden of mine own love’s might:

  O let my books be then the eloquence

  And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

  Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

  More than that tongue that more hath more expressed:

  O learn to read what silent love hath writ!

  To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

  24

  Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled

  Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;

  My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,

  And perspective it is best painter’s art;

  For through the painter must you see his skill,

  To find where your true image pictured lies,

  Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,

  That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:

  Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

  Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

  Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun

  Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;

  Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art:

  They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

  25

  Let those who are in favour with their stars

  Of public honour and proud titles boast,

  Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,

  Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;

  Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread

  But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,

  And in themselves their pride lies buried,

  For at a frown they in their glory die.

  The painful warrior famoused for worth,

  After a thousand victories once foiled,

  Is from the book of honour razed quite,

  And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:

  Then happy I, that love and am beloved

  Where I may not remove, nor be removed.

  26

  Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

  Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit:

  To thee I send this written embassage,

  To witness duty, not to show my wit;

  Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

  May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;

  But that I hope some good conceit of thine

  In thy soul’s thought (all naked) will bestow it:

  Till whatsoever star that guides my moving

  Points on me graciously with fair aspect,

  And puts apparel on my tattered loving,

  To show me worthy of thy sweet respect;

  Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;

  Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

  27

  Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

  The dear repose for limbs with travail tired;

  But then begins a journey in my head

  To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:

  For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,

  Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

  And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

  Looking on darkness which the blind do see;

  Save that my soul’s imaginary sight

  Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

  Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night

  Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new:

  Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,

  For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

  28

  How can I then return in happy plight

  That am debarred the benefit of rest?

  When day’s oppression is not eased by night,

  But day by night and night by day oppressed,

  And each, though enemies to either’s reign,

  Do in consent shake hands to torture me,

  The one by toil, the other to complain

  How far I toil, still farther off from thee.

  I tell the day to please him, thou art bright,

  And dost him grace, when clouds do blot the heaven;

  So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,

  When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even;

  But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,

  And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

  29

  When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

  I all alone beweep my outcast state,

  And trouble deaf heav’n with my bootless cries,

  And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

  Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

  Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

  Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

  With what I most enjoy contented least;

  Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

  Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

  Like to the lark at break of day arising,

  From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

  For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

  30

  When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

  I summon up remembrance of things past,

  I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

  And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;

  Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)

  For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

  And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,

  And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.

  Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

  And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

  The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

  Which I new pay, as if not paid before;

  But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

  All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

  31

  Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts

  Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead;

  And there reigns love, and all love’s loving parts,

  And all those friends which I thought buried.

  How many a holy and obsequious tear

  Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,

  As interest of the dead, which now appear

  But things removed that hidden in thee lie:

  Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

 

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