The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;

  So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

  Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.

  For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:

  Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

  105

  Let not my love be called idolatry,

  Nor my belovèd 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 today, tomorrow 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.

  106

  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.

  107

  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.

  108

  What’s in the brain that ink may character

  Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

  What’s new to speak, what now to register,

  That may express my love or thy dear merit?

  Nothing, sweet boy; but yet like prayers divine

  I must each day say o’er the very same,

  Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,

  Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

  So that eternal love in love’s fresh case

  Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

  Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

  But makes antiquity for aye his page,

  Finding the first conceit of love there bred

  Where time and outward form would show it dead.

  109

  O never say that I was false of heart,

  Though absence seemed my flame to qualify—

  As easy might I from myself depart

  As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.

  That is my home of love. If I have ranged,

  Like him that travels I return again,

  Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

  So that myself bring water for my stain.

  Never believe, though in my nature reigned

  All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

  That it could so preposterously be stained

  To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;

  For nothing this wide universe I call

  Save thou my rose; in it thou art my all.

  110

  Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there

  And made myself 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.

  111

  O, for my sake do you with fortune chide,

  The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

  That did not better for my life provide

  Than public means which public manners breeds.

  Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

  And almost thence my nature is subdued

  To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

  Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,

  Whilst like a willing patient I will drink

  Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection;

  No bitterness that I will bitter think,

  Nor double penance to correct correction.

  Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye

  Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

  112

  Your love and pity doth th‘impression fill

  Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;

  For what care I who calls me well or ill,

  So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?

  You are my all the world, and I must strive

  To know my shames and praises from your tongue—

  None else to me, nor I to none alive,

  That my steeled sense or changes, right or wrong.

  In so profound abyss I throw all care

  Of others’ voices that my adder’s sense

  To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

  Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

  You are so strongly in my purpose bred

  That all the world besides, methinks, they’re dead.

  113

  Since I left you mine eye is in my mind,

  And that which governs me to go about

  Doth part his function and is partly blind,

  Seems seeing, but effectually is out;

  For it no form delivers to the heart

  Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch.

  Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

  Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;

  For if it see the rud‘st or gentlest sight,

  The most sweet favour or deformèd’st creature,

  The mountain or the sea, the day or night,

  The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.

  Incapable of more, replete with you,

  My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.

  114

  Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you,

  Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery,

  Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,

  And that your love taught it this alchemy,

  To make of monsters and things indigest

  Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,

  Creating every bad a perfect best

  As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

  O, ‘tis the first, ’tis flatt‘ry in my seeing,

  And my grea
t mind most kingly drinks it up.

  Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing,

  And to his palate doth prepare the cup.

  If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin

  That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

  115

  Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

  Even those that said I could not love you dearer;

  Yet then my judgement knew no reason why

  My 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,

  Divert 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,

  Crowning 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.

  116

  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 wand’ring barque,

  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.

  117

  Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all

  Wherein I should your great deserts repay,

  Forgot upon your dearest love to call

  Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;

  That I have frequent been with unknown minds,

  And given to time your own dear-purchased right;

  That I have hoisted sail to all the winds

  Which should transport me farthest from your sight.

  Book both my wilfulness and errors down,

  And on just proof surmise accumulate;

  Bring me within the level of your frown,

  But shoot not at me in your wakened hate,

  Since my appeal says I did strive to prove

  The constancy and virtue of your love.

  118

  Like as, to make our appetites more keen,

  With eager compounds we our palate urge;

  As to prevent our maladies unseen

  We sicken to shun sickness when we purge:

  Even so, being full of your ne‘er cloying sweetness,

  To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding,

  And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness

  To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

  Thus policy in love, t’anticipate

  The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

  And brought to medicine a healthful state

  Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured.

  But thence I learn, and find the lesson true:

  Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

  119

  What potions have I drunk of siren tears

  Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,

  Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,

  Still losing when I saw myself to win!

  What wretched errors hath my heart committed

  Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!

  How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted

  In the distraction of this madding fever!

  O benefit of ill! Now I find true

  That better is by evil still made better,

  And ruined love when it is built anew

  Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

  So I return rebuked to my content,

  And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

  120

  That you were once unkind befriends me now,

  And for that sorrow which I then did feel

  Needs must I under my transgression bow,

  Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.

  For if you were by my unkindness shaken

  As I by yours, you’ve past a hell of time,

  And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken

  To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.

  O that our night of woe might have remembered

  My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits,

  And soon to you as you to me then tendered

  The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!

  But that your trespass now becomes a fee;

  Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

  121

  ’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed

  When not to be receives reproach of being,

  And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed

  Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.

  For why should others’ false adulterate eyes

  Give salutation to my sportive blood?

  Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

  Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

  No, I am that I am, and they that level

  At my abuses reckon up their own.

  I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;

  By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,

  Unless this general evil they maintain:

  All men are bad and in their badness reign.

  122

  Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

  Full charactered with lasting memory,

  Which shall above that idle rank remain

  Beyond all date, even to eternity;

  Or at the least so long as brain and heart

  Have faculty by nature to subsist,

  Till each to razed oblivion yield his part

  Of thee, thy record never can be missed.

  That poor retention could not so much hold,

  Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

  Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

  To trust those tables that receive thee more.

  To keep an adjunct to remember thee

  Were to import forgetfulness in me.

  123

  No, time, thou shalt not boast that I do change!

  Thy pyramids built up with newer might

  To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,

  They are but dressings of a former sight.

  Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

  What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

  And rather make them born to our desire

  Than think that we before have heard them told.

  Thy registers and thee I both defy,

  Not wond’ring at the present nor the past;

  For thy records and what we see doth lie,

  Made more or less by thy continual haste.

  This I do vow, and this shall ever be:

  I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

  124

  If my dear love were but the child of state

  It might for fortune’s bastard be unfathered,

  As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,

  Weeds among weeds or flowers with flowers gathered.

  No, it was builded far from accident;

  It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

  Under the blow of thrallèd discontent

  Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls.

  It fears not policy, that heretic

  Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,

&n
bsp; But all alone stands hugely politic,

  That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.

  To this I witness call the fools of time,

  Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

  125

  Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,

  With my extern the outward honouring,

  Or laid great bases for eternity

  Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

  Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

  Lose all and more by paying too much rent,

  For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,

  Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?

  No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,

  And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

  Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art

  But mutual render, only me for thee.

  Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul

  When most impeached stands least in thy control.

  126

  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 show‘st

  Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow’st—

  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.

  127

  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 brow 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,