Shakespeare's Sonnets - William Shakespeare (classic romance novels .TXT) š
- Author: William Shakespeare
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O! blame me not, if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
Your own glass shows you when you look in it.
CIV
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyād,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summersā pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turnād,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burnād,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceivād;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceivād:
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beautyās summer dead.
CV
Let not my love be callād idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confinād,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
āFair, kind, and true,ā is all my argument,
āFair, kind, and true,ā varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often livād alone,
Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
CVI
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beautyās best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressād
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.
CVII
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 confinād doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endurād,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assurād,
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, Iāll live in this poor rime,
While he insults oāer dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrantsā crests and tombs of brass are spent.
CVIII
Whatās in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figurād to thee my true spirit?
Whatās 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 oāer the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowād thy fair name.
So that eternal love in loveās 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.
CIX
O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemād 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 rangād,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Just to the time, not with the time exchangād,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe though in my nature reignād,
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stainād,
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.
CX
Alas! ātis true, I have gone here and there,
And made my self a motley to the view,
Gorād mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is, that I have lookād on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays provād thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save 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 confinād.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
CXI
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 manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subduād
To what it works in, like the dyerās hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewād;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,
Potions of eisel āgainst 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.
CXII
Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stampād upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you oāer-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 steelād sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of othersā voices, that my adderās 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.
CXIII
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 rudāst or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformedāst 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.
CXIV
Or whether doth my mind, being crownād with you,
Drink up the monarchās 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! ātis the first, ātis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is āgreeing,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup:
If it be poisonād, ātis the lesser sin
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
CXV
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 millionād accidents
Creep in ātwixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpāst intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas! why fearing of Timeās tyranny,
Might I not then say, āNow I love you best,ā
When I was certain oāer 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?
CXVI
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 wandering bark,
Whose worthās unknown, although his height be taken.
Loveās not Timeās fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickleās compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me provād,
I never writ, nor no man ever lovād.
CXVII
Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchasād right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise, accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakenād hate;
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.
CXVIII
Like as, to make our appetite more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
Even so, being full of your neāer-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseasād, ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, to anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assurād,
And brought to medicine a healthful state
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be curād;
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
CXIX
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
Distillād from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,
In the distraction of this madding fever!
O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is, by evil still made better;
And ruinād love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebukād to my content,
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.
CXX
That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammerād steel.
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