The Sonnets

Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,

And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!

Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,

The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

Some say thy fault is youth, some wanto

Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,

Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:

Thou mak'st faults graces, that to thee resort:

As on the finger of a throned queen,

The basest jewel will be well esteemed:

So are those errors that in thee are seen,

To truths translated, and for true things deemed.

How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,

If like a lamb he could his looks translate!

How many gazers mightst thou lead away,

if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!

But do not so, I love thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

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 widowed 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.

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 leaped 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.

The forward violet thus did I chide,

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If not from my love's breath? The purple pride

Which on thy soft check for complexion dwells,

In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.

The lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair,

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, another white despair:

A third nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,

And to his robbery had a

But for his theft in pride of all his growth 

A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,

But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.

Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long,

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,

Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?

Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,

In gentle numbers time so idly spent,

Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,

And gives thy pen both skill and argument.

Rise resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,

If time have any wrinkle graven there,

If any, be a satire to decay,

And make time's spoils despised everywhere.

Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,

So thou prevent'st his scythe, and crooked knife.

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends:

So dost thou too, and therein dignified:

Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,

'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,

Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:

But best is best, if never intermixed'?

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:

And to be praised of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,

To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.

My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,

I love not less, though less the show appear,

That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming, 

The owner's tongue doth publish every where.

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:

Because I would not dull you with my song.

Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,

That having such a scope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Than when it hath my added praise beside.

O blame me not if I no more can write!

Look in your glass and there appears a face,

That over-goes my blunt invention quite, 

Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinful then striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?

For to no other pass my verses tend,

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.

And more, much more than in my verse can sit,

Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

To me fair friend you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,

Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.

Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,

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.

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.

When in the chronicle of wasted time,