Sonnet 109
O, never say that I was false of heart1,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify2.
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 ranged5,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged7,
So that myself bring water for my stain8.
Never believe, though in my nature reigned
All frailties10 that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously11 be stained,
To leave for nothing12 all thy sum of good:
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose — in it thou art my all.
Sonnet 110
Alas, ’tis true, I have gone1 here and there
And made myself a motley2 to the view,
Gored3 mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new4.
Most true it is that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely6, but, by all above,
These blenches7 gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays8 proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end9:
Mine appetite10 I never more will grind
On newer proof11, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confined12.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best13,
Even to thy pure and most most loving14 breast.
Sonnet 111
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide1,
The guilty goddess of2 my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means4 which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand5,
And almost6 thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.
Pity me then and wish I were renewed8,
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel10 gainst my strong infection,
No bitterness11 that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction12.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
Sonnet 112
Your love and pity doth th’impression1 fill
Which vulgar2 scandal stamped upon my brow,
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So4 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 wrong7.
In so profound abysm9 I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense10
To critic and to flatterer stoppèd are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense12:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred13
That all the world besides me thinks you’re dead.
Sonnet 113
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
And that which governs me to go about2
Doth part3 his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing4, but effectually is out,
For it no form delivers to the heart5
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch6.
Of his quick objects7 hath the mind no part,
Nor8 his own vision holds what it doth catch,
For if it see the rud’st or gentlest9 sight,
The most sweet favour10 or deformed’st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes12 them to your feature.
Incapable of13 more, replete with you,
My most true14 mind thus makes mine eye untrue.
Sonnet 114
Or whether1 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 alchemy4,
To make of monsters and things indigest5
Such cherubins6 as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad7 a perfect best,
As fast as objects to his beams8 assemble?
O, ’tis the first, ’tis flatt’ry in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly10 drinks it up:
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing11,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup.
If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin14.
Sonnet 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 full4 flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time5, whose millioned accidents
Creep in ’twixt vows6 and change decrees of kings,
Tan7 sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to th’course of alt’ring8 things —
Alas why, fearing of Time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say10, ‘Now I love you best’,
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning12 the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe13: then might I not say so,
To give full grow14th to that which still doth grow?
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit2 impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remove4r to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark5
That looks on tempests and is never shaken,
It is the star7 to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown8, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool9, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending10 sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom12.
If this be error and upon me proved13,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Sonnet 117
Accuse1 me thus: that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call3,
Whereto all bonds4 do tie me day by day,
That I have frequent5 been with unknown minds
And given to time your own dear-purchased right6,
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book9 both my wilfulness and errors down,
And on just proof10 surmise, accumulate,
Bring me within the level11 of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate12,
Since my appeal13 says I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue14 of your love.
Sonnet 118
Like as1 to make our appetites more keen
With eager compounds2 we our palate urge,
As to prevent our maladies unseen3
We sicken4 to shun sickness when we purge,
Even so5, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding6
And, sick of welfare7, found a kind of meetness
To be diseased ere that there was true needing8.
Thus policy in love, t’anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured9
And brought to medicine11 a healthful state
; Which, rank of12 goodness, would by ill be cured.
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
Sonnet 119
What potions have I drunk of siren1 tears,
Distilled from limbecks2 foul as hell within,
Applying3 fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to4 win?
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessèd never6?
How have mine eyes out of their spheres7 been fitted
In the distraction of this madding8 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 content13
And gain by ills thrice14 more than I have spent.
Sonnet 120
That you were once unkind befriends me1 now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I3 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 passed a hell of6 time,
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken7
To weigh8 how once I suffered in your crime.
O, that our night of woe might have remembered9
My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me then, tendered11
The humble salve12 which wounded bosoms fits.
But that your trespass13 now becomes a fee:
Mine ransoms14 yours and yours must ransom me.
Sonnet 121
’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed1,
When not to be receives reproach of being2,
And the just3 pleasure lost which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false5 adulterate eyes
Give salutation to6 my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies7,
Which in their wills8 count bad what I think good?
No, I am that9 I am and they that level
At my abuses10 reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel11.
By12 their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain13:
All men are bad and in their badness reign14.
Sonnet 122
Thy gift, thy tables1, are within my brain
Full charactered2 with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank3 remain
Beyond all date4, even to eternity,
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty6 by nature to subsist,
Till each to razed7 oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention9 could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies10 thy dear love to score.
Therefore to give them from me was I bold11,
To trust those tables that receive thee more12.
To keep an adjunct13 to remember thee
Were to import14 forgetfulness in me.
Sonnet 123
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.
Thy pyramids2 built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange:
They are but dressings of a former sight4.
Our dates5 are brief and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist6 upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire7
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers9 and thee I both defy,
Not wond’ring10 at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie11,
Made more or less by thy continual haste12.
This I do vow and this shall ever be:
I will be true14, despite thy scythe and thee.
Sonnet 124
If my dear love1 were but the child of state,
It might for2 Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered4.
No, it was builded far from accident5,
It suffers not in smiling pomp6, nor falls
Under the blow of thrallèd discontent7,
Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls8.
It fears not policy9, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours10,
But all alone stands hugely politic11,
That it nor12 grows with heat nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness13 call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness14, who have lived for crime.
Sonnet 125
Were’t aught to me1 I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring2,
Or laid great bases3 for eternity,
Which4 proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour5
Lose all and more, by paying too much rent6,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour7,
Pitiful thrivers8, in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious9 in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation10, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds11, knows no art,
But mutual render12, only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborned informer13, a true soul
When most impeached14 stands least in thy control.
Sonnet 126
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass2, his sickle hour,
Who hast by waning grown3, and therein show’st
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow’st —
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack5,
As thou goest onwards6, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May Time disgrace8 and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion9 of her pleasure:
She may detain, but not still keep10, her treasure.
Her audit11, though delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus12 is to render thee.
( )13
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Sonnet 127
In the old age1 black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name2.
But now is black beauty’s successive3 heir
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame4:
For since each hand hath put on5 nature’s power,
Fairing the foul6 with art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name7, no holy bower,
But is profaned8, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ brows are raven black,
Her eyes so suited10, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack11,
Sland’ring creation with a false esteem12.
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe13,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
Sonnet 128
How oft, when thou, my music1, music play’st
Upon that blessèd wood2 whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st3
The wiry concord4 that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks5 that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest7 reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled, they would change their state
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And situation with those dancing chips10
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy13 jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
Sonnet 129
Th’expense1 of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action2, and till action, lust
Is perjured3, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude4, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight5,
Past reason6 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 proof11 and proved a very woe,
Before, a joy proposed12 — behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell14.
Sonnet 130
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun1,
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red,
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun3,
If hairs be wires4, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked5, 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 reeks8.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a go11ddess 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 compare14.
Sonnet 131
Thou art as tyrannous1, so as thou art,
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel,
For well thou know’st to my dear3 doting heart
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
The Sonnets and Other Poems Page 20