The Sonnets and Other Poems (22 page)
Read The Sonnets and Other Poems Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains
beguiled
2
,
Which,
labouring
3
for
invention
,
bear amiss
The second burden of a former child
.
O, that
record
5
could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred
courses of the sun
6
,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since
mind at first in character was done
8
,
That I might see what the old world could say
To this
composèd wonder of your frame
10
:
Whether we are
mended
11
, or
whe’er
better they,
Or whether
revolution be the same
12
.
O, sure I am the
wits
13
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
3
that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend
4
.
Nativity
5
, once in the
main
of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked
7
eclipses
gainst his
glory
fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift
confound
8
.
Time doth
transfix
9
the
flourish
set on youth
And
delves the parallels
10
in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the
rarities
11
of nature’s
truth
,
And nothing stands but for his
scythe
12
to mow.
And yet to
times in hope
13
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
4
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
8
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
13
, whilst thou dost
wake
elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.
Sin of self-love
possesseth
1
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
5
is as mine,
No shape so
true
6
, no
truth
of such
account
,
And
for myself
7
mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount
8
.
But when my
glass
9
shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopped
10
with
tanned antiquity
,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:
Self so self-loving were iniquity
12
.
’Tis thee, my self, that for myself I praise
13
,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
Against
1
my love shall be as I am now
With Time’s
injurious
2
hand crushed and
o’er-worn
,
When hours have
drained his blood
3
and
filed
his brow
With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn
Hath travelled on to age’s
steepy
5
night,
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
Are vanishing, or vanished, out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring
8
:
For such a time do I now
fortify
9
Against
confounding
10
age’s cruel knife,
That
11
he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty,
though
12
my lover’s life.
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live and he in them still
green
14
.
When I have seen by Time’s
fell
1
hand defaced
The rich
proud cost
2
of
outworn
buried age,
When
sometime
3
lofty towers I see
down-razed
And
brass
4
eternal slave to
mortal rage
,
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win
of
7
the wat’ry
main
,
Increasing
8
store
with loss and loss with store,
When I have seen such
interchange of state
9
,
Or
state
10
itself
confounded to decay
,
Ruin hath taught me thus to
ruminate
11
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Since
1
brass nor stone nor earth nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality
o’er-sways
2
their power,
How
with this rage
3
shall beauty
hold a plea
,
Whose
action
4
is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the
wrackful
6
siege of
batt’ring
days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel
from
10
Time’s chest
lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his
spoil
12
of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Tired with
all these
1
, for restful death I cry,
As to behold
desert a beggar born
2
,
And
needy nothing trimmed in jollity
3
,
And
purest faith unhappily forsworn
4
,
And
gilded
5
honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue
rudely strumpeted
6
,
And
right
7
perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by
limping sway
8
disablèd,
And
art
9
made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly
doctor-like
10
controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled
simplicity
11
,
And captive good
attending
12
captain ill.
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that
to
14
die I leave my love alone.
Ah,
wherefore
1
with
infection
should he live,
And with his presence
grace impiety
2
,
That sin
by
3
him
advantage
should achieve
And
lace
4
itself with his
society
?
Why should
false painting
5
imitate his cheek
And steal
dead seeing
6
of
his living
hue
?
Why should
poor
7
beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow
8
, since his rose is true?
Why should he live, now
Nature bankrupt is
9
,
Beggared of blood to blush through
lively
10
veins,
For she hath no
exchequer
11
now but his,
And,
proud of many
12
, lives upon his
gains
?
O, him she
stores
13
, to show what wealth she had
In days long since, before these last so bad.
Thus
1
is his cheek the
map
of
days outworn
,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before these
bastard signs of fair
3
were
born
Or
durst inhabit
4
on a living brow,
Before the
golden tresses of the dead
5
,
The right of
sepulchres
6
, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head,
Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another
gay
8
:
In him those
holy antique hours
9
are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another’s green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was
of yore
14
.
Those
parts
1
of thee that the world’s eye doth view
Want
2
nothing that
the thought of hearts can mend
:
All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
Utt’ring bare truth,
even so as foes commend
4
.
Thy outward
5
thus
with outward
praise is crowned,
But those same tongues that give thee so
thine own
6
In other
accents
7
do this praise
confound
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
And that,
in guess
10
, they measure by thy deeds.
Then,
churls
11
, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,
To thy fair flower add the
rank
12
smell of weeds:
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
The
soil
14
is this, that thou dost
common
grow.
That thou art
blamed
1
shall not be thy
defect
,
For slander’s
mark
2
was ever yet the fair:
The ornament of beauty is suspect
3
,
A
crow
4
that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.
So thou be
5
good, slander doth but
approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed oft-time:
For
canker
7
vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present’st a pure
unstainèd
8
prime
.
Thou hast passed by the
ambush of young days
9
,
Either not
assailed
10
or
victor being charged
:
Yet this thy praise cannot be
so
11
thy praise,
To
tie up envy evermore enlarged
12
.
If some
suspect of ill
13
masked
not thy show,
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts
shouldst owe
14
.
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly
sullen
2
bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell.
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should
make you woe
8
.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps
compounded
10
am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name
rehearse
11
,
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should
look into your moan
13
And mock you
with me
14
after I am gone.
O, lest the world should
task
1
you to
recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove,
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie
To do more for me than mine own desert
And hang more praise upon deceasèd I
Than
niggard
8
truth would willingly impart.
O, lest your true love may seem false in this,
That you
for love speak well of me untrue
10
,
My name be buried where my body is
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by
that which I bring forth
13
,
And so
should you
14
, to love things nothing worth.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined
choirs
4
, where
late
the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self
8
, that
seals up all in rest
.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by
12
.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong
To love
that
14
well which thou must
leave
ere long.
