O, how I faint when I of you do write....
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem.
O, how thy worth with manners may I sing.
O, lest the world should task you to recite.
O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head.
O, never say that I was false of heart...
O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are.
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power.
O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends.
Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you.
Or shall I live your epitaph to make....
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth...
Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye...
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea.
Since I left you mine eye is in my mind....
So am I as the rich, whose blessed key..
So are you to my thoughts as food to life.
So is it not with me as with that Muse...
So, now I have confessed that he is thine..
So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse.
So shall I like, supposing thou art true..
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill.
Some say, thy fault is youth, some wantonness.
Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said..
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all.
That god forbid that made me first your slave.
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect.
That thou hast her, it is not all my grief.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold.
That you were once unkind befriends me now.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame..
The forward violet thus did I chide...
The little Love-god lying once asleep.
The other two, slight air and purging fire.
Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now.
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface...
They that have power to hunt and will do none.
Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me.
Those hours that with gentle work did frame.
Those lines that I before have writ do lie....
Those lips that Love's own hand did make.....
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view.
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits..
Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art...
Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes.
Thus can my love excuse the slow offense.
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn.
Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts..
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain.
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear.
Tired with all these, for restful death I say.
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed.
To me, fair friend, you never can be old.
Two loves I have of comfort and despair.
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend....
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse..
Weary with toil, I haste me to bed.....
Weren't aught to me I bore the canopy.
What is your substance, whereof are you made..
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears.
What's in the brain, that ink may character.
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow.
When I consider everything that grows..
When I do count the clock that tells the time.
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.
When in the chronicles of wasted time.....
When most I wink, then do mine eyes see best.
When my love swears that she is made of truth.
When thou shalt be disposed to set me light..
When to the sessions of sweet thought....
Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long..
Whilst I alone didst call upon thy aid.......
Who is it that says most? which can say more.
Who will believe my verse in time to come.
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will'.
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day.
Why is my verse so barren of new pride...
Your love and pity doth the impression fill.
ROM 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,
Thyself 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, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
HEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an ill-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer "This fair child of mine 10
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
OOK 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 unear'd 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, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
THRIFTY loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank, she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,
Which, used, lives th' executor to be.
HOSE hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
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