The Sonnets | Page 3

sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and
thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,

If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count,
and make my old excuse'
Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood
warm when thou feel'st it cold.
3
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time
that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not
renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For
where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy
husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
Of his self-love
to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls
back the lovely April of her prime,
So thou through windows of thine
age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou
live remembered not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
4
Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,
Upon thy self thy
beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And
being frank she lends to those are free:
Then beauteous niggard why
dost thou abuse,
The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless usurer why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst
not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy
sweet self dost deceive,
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must
be tombed with thee,
Which used lives th' executor to be.
5
Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze

where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads
summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap
checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed
and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty
were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers
distilled though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show, their
substance still lives sweet.
6
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer ere
thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,

With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed:
That use is not forbidden
usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thy
self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one,

Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times
refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willed for thou art much
too fair,
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
7
Lo in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head,
each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving
with looks his sacred majesty,
And having climbed the steep-up
heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet
mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden
pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch with weary car,
Like
feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes (fore duteous) now
converted are
From his low tract and look another way:
So thou,
thy self out-going in thy noon:

Unlooked on diest unless thou get a
son.
8
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets
war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st
not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true

concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the
parts that thou shouldst bear:
Mark how one string sweet husband to
another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire,
and child, and happy mother,
Who all in one, one pleasing note do
sing:
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this
to thee, 'Thou single wilt prove none'.
9
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thy self in
single life?
Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will
wail thee like a makeless wife,
The world will be thy widow and still
weep,
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every
private widow well may keep,
By children's eyes, her husband's
shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts
but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in
the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it:
No love
toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd'rous
shame commits.
10
For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any
Who for thy self art
so unprovident.
Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But
that thou none lov'st is most evident:
For thou art so possessed with
murd'rous hate,
That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy
chief desire:
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,

Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be as thy presence is