The Sonnets

And you but one, can every shadow lend:

Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,

Is poorly imitated after you,

On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,

And you in Grecian tires are painted new: 

Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,

The one doth shadow of your beauty show,

The other as your bounty doth appear,

And you in every blessed shape we know.

In all external grace you have some part,

But you like none, none you for constant heart.

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:

The canker blooms have full as deep a dye,

As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,

When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:

But for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,

Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made: 

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn:

The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So till the judgment that your self arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said

Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,

Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,

To-morrow sharpened in his former might.

So love be thou, although to-day thou fill

Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,

To-morrow see again, and do not kill

The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:

Let this sad interim like the ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,

Come daily to the banks, that when they see:

Return of love, more blest may be the view.

Or call it winter, which being full of care,

Makes summer's welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.

Being your slave what should I do but tend,

Upon the hours, and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend;

Nor services to do till you require. 

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,

Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,

When you have bid your servant once adieu.

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,

But like a sad slave stay and think of nought

Save where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love, that in your will,

(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.

That god forbid, that made me first your slave,

I should in thought control your times of pleasure,

Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave,

Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.

O let me suffer (being at your beck)

Th' imprisoned absence of your liberty,

And patience tame to sufferance bide each check,

Without accusing you of injury. 

Be where you list, your charter is so strong,

That you your self may privilage your time

To what you will, to you it doth belong,

Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,

Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

If there be nothing new, but that which is,

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which labouring for invention bear amis

The second burthen of a former child!

O that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done.

That I might see what the old world could say,

To this composed wonder of your frame,

Whether we are mended, or whether better they,

Or whether revolution be the same. 

O sure I am the wits of former days,

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end,

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry,

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?

O no, thy love though much, is not so great,

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,

And all my soul, and all my every part;

And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart. 

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,

And for my self mine own worth do define,

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me my self indeed

beated and chopt with ta

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:

Self, so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Against my love shall be as I am now

With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,

When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow

With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn

Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,

And all those beauties whereof now he's king

Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his spring: 

For such a time do I now fortify

Against confounding age's cruel knife,

That he shall never cut from memory

My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,