Shakespeares Sonnets | Page 5

fortify your self in your decay?With means more blessed than my barren rhyme??Now stand you on the top of happy hours,?And many maiden gardens, yet unset,?With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,?Much liker than your painted counterfeit:?So should the lines of life that life repair,?Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,?Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,?Can make you live your self in eyes of men.?To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,?And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
XVII
Who will believe my verse in time to come,?If it were fill'd with your most high deserts??Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb?Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.?If I could write the beauty of your eyes,?And in fresh numbers number all your graces,?The age to come would say 'This poet lies;?Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'?So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,?Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,?And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage?And stretched metre of an antique song:?But were some child of yours alive that time,?You should live twice,--in it, and in my rhyme.
XVIII
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day??Thou art more lovely and more temperate:?Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,?And summer's lease hath all too short a date:?Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,?And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,?And every fair from fair sometime declines,?By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:?But thy eternal summer shall not fade,?Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,?Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,?When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,?So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,?So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
XIX
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,?And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;?Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,?And burn the long-liv'd phoenix, in her blood;?Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,?And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,?To the wide world and all her fading sweets;?But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:?O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,?Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;?Him in thy course untainted do allow?For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.?Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,?My love shall in my verse ever live young.
XX
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,?Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;?A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted?With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:?An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,?Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;?A man in hue all 'hues' in his controlling,?Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.?And for a woman wert thou first created;?Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,?And by addition me of thee defeated,?By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.?But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,?Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
XXI
So is it not with me as with that Muse,?Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse,?Who heaven itself for ornament doth use?And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,?Making a couplement of proud compare'?With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,?With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,?That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.?O! let me, true in love, but truly write,?And then believe me, my love is as fair?As any mother's child, though not so bright?As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:?Let them say more that like of hearsay well;?I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
XXII
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,?So long as youth and thou are of one date;?But when in thee time's furrows I behold,?Then look I death my days should expiate.?For all that beauty that doth cover thee,?Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,?Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:?How can I then be elder than thou art??O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary?As I, not for myself, but for thee will;?Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary?As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.?Presume not on th;heart when mine is slain,?Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
XXIII
As an unperfect actor on the stage,?Who with his fear is put beside his part,?Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,?Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;?So I, for fear of trust, forget to say?The perfect ceremony of love's rite,?And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,?O'ercharg'd with burthen of mine own love's might.?O! let my looks be then the eloquence?And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,?Who plead for love, and look for recompense,?More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.?O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:?To hear with eyes belongs to