The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  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.

  13

  O that you were yourself! But, love, you are

  No longer yours than you yourself here live.

  Against this coming end you should prepare,

  And your sweet semblance to some other give.

  So should that beauty which you hold in lease

  Find no determination; then you were

  Yourself again after your self’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 oft 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 every thing 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 selfsame 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 rite,

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

  O’er-charged 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 famousèd for might,

  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 travel 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 do‘st 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 strength seem stronger.

  29

  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 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 endearèd 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,

  Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

  Who all their parts of me to thee did give:

  That due of many now is thine alone.

  Their images I loved I view in thee,

  And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

  32

  If thou survive my well-contented day

  When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,

  And shalt by fortune once more resurvey

  These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,

  Compare them with the bett‘ring of the time,

  And though they be outstripped by every pen,

  Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme

  Exceeded by the height of happier men.

 
O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

  ‘Had my friend’s muse grown with this growing age,

  A dearer birth than this his love had brought

  To march in ranks of better equipage;

  But since he died, and poets better prove,

  Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.’

  33

  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 masked him from me now.

  Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth:

  Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

  34

  Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day

  And make me travel forth without my cloak,

  To let base clouds o‘ertake me in my way,

  Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?

  ‘Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break

  To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,

  For no man well of such a salve can speak

  That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace.

  Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;

  Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.

  Th’offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief

  To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.

  Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,

  And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

  35

  No more be grieved at that 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,