14 William Shakespeare Selection of Sonnets

I.

  • From fairest creatures we desire increase,
  • That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
  • But as the riper should by time decease,
  • His tender heir might bear his memory:
  • But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
  • Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
  • Making a famine where abundance lies,
  • Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
  • Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
  • And only herald to the gaudy spring,
  • Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
  • And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:
  • Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
  • To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
  • III.

  • Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
  • Now is the time that face should form another;
  • Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
  • Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
  • For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
  • Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
  • Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
  • Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
  • Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee
  • Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
  • So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
  • Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
  • But if thou live, remembered not to be,
  • Die single and thine image dies with thee.
  • XII.

  • When I do count the clock that tells the time,
  • And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
  • When I behold the violet past prime,
  • And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;
  • When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
  • Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
  • And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,
  • Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
  • Then of thy beauty do I question make,
  • That thou among the wastes of time must go,
  • Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
  • And die as fast as they see others grow;
  • And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
  • Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
  • XV.

  • When I consider every thing that grows
  • Holds in perfection but a little moment,
  • That this huge stage presenteth nought 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.
  • XVIII.

  • 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.
  • XIX.

  • 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.
  • XX.

  • 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 prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
  • Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
  • XXIII.

  • As an unperfect actor on the stage,
  • Who with his fear is put beside 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 rite,
  • And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
  • O’ercharged with burthen of mine own love’s might.
  • O! let my looks 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 express’d.
  • O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
  • To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.
  • XXIX.

  • When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
  • I all alone beweep my outcast state,
  • And trouble deaf heaven 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 my self 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.
  • XXX.

  • 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 the 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 restor’d and sorrows end.
  • XXXIII.

  • Full many a glorious morning have I seen
  • Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
  • Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
  • Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
  • Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
  • With ugly rack on his celestial face,
  • And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
  • Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
  • Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
  • With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
  • But out, alack, he was but one hour mine,
  • The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
  • Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
  • Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.
  • XXXV.

  • No more be grieved atthat which thou hast done:
  • Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:
  • Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
  • And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
  • All men make faults, and even I in this,
  • Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
  • Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
  • Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
  • For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
  • Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
  • And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
  • Such civil war is in my love and hate,
  • That I an accessary needs must be,
  • To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
  • LV.

  • Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
  • Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
  • But you shall shine more bright in these contents
  • Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
  • When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
  • And broils root out the work of masonry,
  • Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
  • The living record of your memory.
  • ‘Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
  • Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
  • Even in the eyes of all posterity
  • That wear this world out to the ending doom.
  • So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
  • You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
  • LVI.

  • Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
  • Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
  • Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,
  • To-morrow sharpened in his former might:
  • So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fill
  • Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
  • To-morrow see again, and do not kill
  • The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness.
  • Let this sad interim like the ocean be
  • Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
  • Come daily to the banks, that when they see
  • Return of love, more blest may be the view;
  • As call it winter, which being full of care,
  • Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.
  • LX.

  • Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  • So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  • Each changing place with that which goes before,
  • In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  • Nativity, once in the main of light,
  • Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
  • Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight,
  • And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  • Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  • And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
  • Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
  • And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
  • And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
  • Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
  • LXII.

  • Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
  • And all my soul, and all my every part;
  • And for this sin there is no remedy,
  • It is so grounded inward in my heart.
  • Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
  • No shape so true, no truth of such account;
  • And for myself mine own worth do define,
  • As I all other in all worths surmount.
  • But when my glass shows me myself indeed
  • Beated and chopp’d with tanned antiquity,
  • Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
  • Self so self-loving were iniquity.
  • ‘Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
  • Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
  • LXV.

  • Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
  • But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
  • How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
  • Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
  • O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
  • Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
  • When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
  • Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
  • O fearful meditation! where, alack,
  • Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
  • Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
  • Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
  • O! none, unless this miracle have might,
  • That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
  • LXXI.

  • No longer mourn for me when I am dead
  • Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
  • Give warning to the world that I am fled
  • From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
  • Nay, if you read this line, remember not
  • The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
  • That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
  • If thinking on me then should make you woe.
  • O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
  • When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
  • Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
  • But let your love even with my life decay;
  • Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
  • And mock you with me after I am gone.
  • LXXIII.

  • That time of year thou mayst in me behold
  • When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
  • Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
  • Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
  • In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
  • As after sunset fadeth in the west;
  • Which by and by black night doth take away,
  • Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
  • In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
  • That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
  • As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
  • Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
  • This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
  • To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
  • LXXIV.

  • But be contented when that fell arrest
  • Without all bail shall carry me away,
  • My life hath in this line some interest,
  • Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
  • When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
  • The very part was consecrate to thee:
  • The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
  • My spirit is thine, the better part of me:
  • So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
  • The prey of worms, my body being dead;
  • The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,
  • Too base of thee to be remembered.
  • The worth of that is that which it contains,
  • And that is this, and this with thee remains.
  • LXXX.

  • O! how I faint when I of you do write,
  • Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
  • And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
  • To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
  • But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
  • The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
  • My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
  • On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
  • Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
  • Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
  • Or, being wracked, I am a worthless boat,
  • He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
  • Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
  • The worst was this, my love was my decay.
  • LXXXV.

  • My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,
  • While comments of your praise richly compiled,
  • Reserve thy character with golden quill,
  • And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.
  • I think good thoughts, whilst others write good words,
  • And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’
  • To every hymn that able spirit affords,
  • In polished form of well-refined pen.
  • Hearing you praised, I say ”tis so, ’tis true,’
  • And to the most of praise add something more;
  • But that is in my thought, whose love to you,
  • Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.
  • Then others, for the breath of words respect,
  • Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
  • LXXXVII.

  • Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
  • And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
  • The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
  • My bonds in thee are all determinate.
  • For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
  • And for that riches where is my deserving?
  • The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
  • And so my patent back again is swerving.
  • Thy self thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
  • Or me to whom thou gav’st it else mistaking;
  • So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
  • Comes home again, on better judgement making.
  • Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
  • In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
  • XCIII.

  • So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
  • Like a deceived husband; so love’s face
  • May still seem love to me, though altered new;
  • Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
  • For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
  • Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
  • In many’s looks, the false heart’s history
  • Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
  • But heaven in thy creation did decree
  • That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
  • Whate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be,
  • Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
  • How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,
  • If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!
  • XCIV.

  • They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
  • That do not do the thing they most do show,
  • Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
  • Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
  • They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,
  • And husband nature’s riches from expense;
  • They are the lords and owners of their faces,
  • Others, but stewards of their excellence.
  • The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
  • Though to itself, it only live and die,
  • But if that flower with base infection meet,
  • The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
  • For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
  • Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.
  • XCVII.

  • How like a winter hath my absence been
  • From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
  • What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
  • What old December’s bareness everywhere!
  • And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
  • The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
  • Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
  • Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
  • Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
  • But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
  • For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
  • And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
  • Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
  • That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
  • XCVIII.

  • From you have I been absent in the spring,
  • When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim,
  • Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
  • That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.
  • Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
  • Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
  • Could make me any summer’s story tell,
  • Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
  • Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
  • Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
  • They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
  • Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
  • Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
  • As with your shadow I with these did play.
  • CV.

  • Let not my love be called idolatry,
  • Nor my beloved as an idol show,
  • Since all alike my songs and praises be
  • To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
  • Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
  • Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
  • Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
  • One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
  • Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
  • Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
  • And in this change is my invention spent,
  • Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
  • Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
  • Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
  • CVI.

  • When in the chronicle of wasted time
  • I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
  • And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
  • In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
  • Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
  • Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
  • I see their antique pen would have expressed
  • Even such a beauty as you master now.
  • So all their praises are but prophecies
  • Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
  • And for they looked but with divining eyes,
  • They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
  • For we, which now behold these present days,
  • Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
  • CVII.

  • Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
  • Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
  • Can yet the lease of my true love control,
  • Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
  • The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
  • And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
  • Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
  • And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
  • Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
  • My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
  • Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
  • While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:
  • And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
  • When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.
  • CX.

  • Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there,
  • And made my self a motley to the view,
  • Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
  • Made old offences of affections new;
  • Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
  • Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
  • These blenches gave my heart another youth,
  • And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
  • Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
  • Mine appetite I never more will grind
  • On newer proof, to try an older friend,
  • A god in love, to whom I am confined.
  • Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
  • Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
  • CXVI.

  • Let me not to the marriage of true minds
  • Admit impediments. Love is not love
  • Which alters when it alteration finds,
  • Or bends with the remover to remove:
  • O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
  • That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
  • It is the star to every wandering bark,
  • Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
  • Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
  • Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
  • Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
  • But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  • If this be error and upon me proved,
  • I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
  • CXXVI.

  • O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
  • Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
  • Who hast by waning grown, and therein showest
  • Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self growest.
  • If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
  • As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
  • She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
  • May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
  • Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
  • She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
  • Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
  • And her quietus is to render thee.
  • CXXVII.

  • In the old age black was not counted fair,
  • Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
  • But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
  • And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
  • For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,
  • Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,
  • Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
  • But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
  • Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,
  • Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
  • At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
  • Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:
  • Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
  • That every tongue says beauty should look so.
  • CXXVIII.

  • How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,
  • Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
  • With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
  • The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
  • Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
  • To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
  • Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
  • At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!
  • To be so tickled, they would change their state
  • And situation with those dancing chips,
  • O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
  • Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips.
  • Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
  • Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
  • CXXIX.

  • The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
  • Is lust in action: and till action, lust
  • Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
  • Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
  • Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
  • Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
  • Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
  • On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
  • Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
  • Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;
  • A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
  • Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.
  • All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
  • To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
  • CXXX.

  • My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
  • Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
  • If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
  • If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
  • I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
  • But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
  • And in some perfumes is there more delight
  • Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
  • I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
  • That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
  • I grant I never saw a goddess go,
  • My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
  • And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
  • As any she belied with false compare.
  • CXXXV.

  • Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
  • And Will to boot, and Will in over-plus;
  • More than enough am I that vexed thee still,
  • To thy sweet will making addition thus.
  • Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
  • Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
  • Shall will in others seem right gracious,
  • And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
  • The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
  • And in abundance addeth to his store;
  • So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
  • One will of mine, to make thy large will more.
  • Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
  • Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
  • CXXXVIII.

  • When my love swears that she is made of truth,
  • I do believe her though I know she lies,
  • That she might think me some untutored youth,
  • Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
  • Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
  • Although she knows my days are past the best,
  • Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
  • On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
  • But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
  • And wherefore say not I that I am old?
  • O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
  • And age in love, loves not to have years told:
  • Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
  • And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
  • CXLIV.

  • Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
  • Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
  • The better angel is a man right fair,
  • The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
  • To win me soon to hell, my female evil,
  • Tempteth my better angel from my side,
  • And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
  • Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
  • And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
  • Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
  • But being both from me, both to each friend,
  • I guess one angel in another’s hell:
  • Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
  • Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
  • CXLVI.

  • Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
  • … … … these rebel powers that thee array
  • Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
  • Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
  • Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
  • Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
  • Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
  • Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?
  • Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
  • And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
  • Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
  • Within be fed, without be rich no more:
  • So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
  • And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
  • CXLVII.

  • My love is as a fever longing still,
  • For that which longer nurseth the disease;
  • Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
  • The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
  • My reason, the physician to my love,
  • Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
  • Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
  • Desire is death, which physic did except.
  • Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
  • And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
  • My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
  • At random from the truth vainly expressed;
  • For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
  • Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
  • CLII.

  • In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,
  • But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
  • In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
  • In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
  • But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,
  • When I break twenty? I am perjured most;
  • For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
  • And all my honest faith in thee is lost:
  • For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
  • Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
  • And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
  • Or made them swear against the thing they see;
  • For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured eye,
  • To swear against the truth so foul a lie!
  • Source

    Shakespeare, William. “Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Ed. William J. Rolfe. New York: American Book Company, 1905. Google Books. 46-137. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <https://books.google.com/books?id=1Ik9AAAAYAAJ>

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    Anthology of Medieval Literature Copyright © 2021 by Christian Beck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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