The Sonnets

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.

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.

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.

O never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,

As easy might I from my self 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 my self 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.

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

And made my self 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.

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 ma

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.

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 abysm 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 are dead.

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 deformed'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 maketh mine untrue.

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 flattery in my seeing,

And my great 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.

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer,

Yet then my judgment 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 the course of alt'ring things:

Alas why fearing of time's tyra

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.

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 bark,

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,