Poetry quotes

“The tender spring upon thy tempting lip Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted: Make use of time, let not advantage slip; Beauty within itself should not be wasted:

Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time.

“Were I hard-favour’d, foul, or wrinkled-old, Ill-nurtured, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice, O’erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold, Thick-sighted, barren, lean and lacking juice, Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee; But having no defects, why dost abhor me?

Thus she replies: “Thy palfrey as he should, Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire: Affection is a coal that must be cool’d; Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire:

The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;

Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone.

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But Lust’s effect is tempest after sun; Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done;

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

“More I could tell, but more I dare not say; The text is old, the orator too green. Therefore, in sadness, now I will away; My face is full of shame, my heart of teen:

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace, Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast, And homeward through the dark laund runs apace; Leaves Love upon her back deeply distress’d.

Look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky, So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye;

Which after him she darts, as one on shore Gazing upon a late-embarked friend, Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:

She marking them begins a wailing note And sings extemporally a woeful ditty; How love makes young men thrall and old men dote; How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty: Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, And still the choir of echoes answer so.

Her song was tedious and outwore the night, For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short:

If pleased themselves, others, they think, delight In such-like circumstance, with such-like sport: Their copious stories oftentimes begun End without audience and are never done.

Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside, Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass, To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground, Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown’d.

O hard-believing love, how strange it seems Not to believe, and yet too credulous!

Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes; Despair and hope make thee ridiculous: The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely, In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

“What win I, if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.

Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy?

For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?

Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly, A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth: His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth No penetrable entrance to her plaining:

Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.

Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed In the remorseless wrinkles of his face; Her modest eloquence with sighs is mixed, Which to her oratory adds more grace. She puts the period often from his place;

“All which together, like a troubled ocean, Beat at thy rocky and wreck-threatening heart, To soften it with their continual motion; For stones dissolved to water do convert. O, if no harder than a stone thou art, Melt at my tears, and be compassionate!

Soft pity enters at an iron gate.

“In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee: Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame? To all the host of heaven I complain me, Thou wrong’st his honour, wound’st his princely name. Thou art not what thou seem’st;

But she hath lost a dearer thing than life, And he hath won what he would lose again: This forced league doth force a further strife;

This momentary joy breeds months of pain; This hot desire converts to cold disdain:

Pure Chastity is rifled of her store, And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before.

“

O comfort-killing Night, image of hell!

Dim register and notary of shame! Black stage for tragedies and murders fell! Vast sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame! Blind muffled bawd! dark harbour for defame! Grim cave of death! whispering conspirator With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!

“Were Tarquin Night, as he is but Night’s child, The silver-shining queen he would distain; Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled, Through Night’s black bosom should not peep again: So should I have co-partners in my pain;

And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage, As palmers’ chat makes short their pilgrimage.

“Where now I have no one to blush with me, To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine, To mask their brows and hide their infamy;

“So then he hath it when he cannot use it, And leaves it to be master’d by his young; Who in their pride do presently abuse it: Their father was too weak, and they too strong, To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long.

The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours Even in the moment that we call them ours.

“Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing; What virtue breeds iniquity devours:

“

The patient dies while the physician sleeps; The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;

Justice is feasting while the widow weeps; Advice is sporting while infection breeds: Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds: Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages, Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

“

Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn and sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right, To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;

… beldam daughters of her daughter, To make the child a man, the man a child, To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter, To tame the unicorn and lion wild, To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled, To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

And waste huge stones with little water-drops.

“Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, Unless thou couldst return to make amends? One poor retiring minute in an age Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends, Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends:

The baser is he, coming from a king, To shame his hope with deeds degenerate: The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honour’d, or begets him hate;

For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

The moon being clouded presently is miss’d, But little stars may hide them when they list.

“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, The stain upon his silver down will stay. Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day:

Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly, But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

“Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools! Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators! Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools; Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters; To trembling clients be you mediators:

To see sad sights moves more than hear them told; For then the eye interprets to the ear The heavy motion that it doth behold, When every part a part of woe doth bear. ’Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear:

Deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords, And sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.

Her letter now is seal’d, and on it writ “At Ardea to my lord with more than haste.” The post attends, and she delivers it, Charging the sour-faced groom to hie as fast As lagging fowls before the northern blast:

“

Why should the private pleasure of someone Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe: For one’s offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general?

Which all this time hath overslipp’d her thought, That she with painted images hath spent; Being from the feeling of her own grief brought By deep surmise of others’ detriment; Losing her woes in shows of discontent.

It easeth some, though none it ever cured, To think their dolour others have endured.

But now the mindful messenger, come back, Brings home his lord and other company; Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black: And round about her tear-distained eye Blue circles stream’d, like rainbows in the sky:

My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak; No rightful plea might plead for justice there: His scarlet lust came evidence to swear That my poor beauty had purloin’d his eyes;

And when the judge is robb’d the prisoner dies.

“O, teach me how to make mine own excuse! Or at the least this refuge let me find; Though my gross blood be stain’d with this abuse, Immaculate and spotless is my mind; That was not forced;

To show her bleeding body thorough Rome, And so to publish Tarquin’s foul offence: Which being done with speedy diligence, The Romans plausibly did give consent To Tarquin’s everlasting banishment.

When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although I know my years be past the best, I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue, Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.

But wherefore says my love that she is young? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love’s best habit is a soothing tongue, And age, in love, loves not to have years told.

Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me, Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, That like two spirits do suggest me still; My better angel is a man right fair, My worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.

The sun look’d on the world with glorious eye, Yet not so wistly as this queen on him. He, spying her, bounced in, whereas he stood: “O Jove,” quoth she, “why was not I a flood!”

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle;

Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty; Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle; Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty: A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle; Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty;

Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle; Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty:

A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs; And if these pleasures may thee move, Then live with me and be my love.

If that the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.

All thy fellow birds do sing, Careless of thy sorrowing. Even so, poor bird, like thee, None alive will pity me. Whilst as fickle Fortune smiled, Thou and I were both beguiled. Everyone that flatters thee Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find:

Every man will be thy friend Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend; But if store of crowns be scant, No man will supply thy want. If that one be prodigal, Bountiful they will him call, And with such-like flattering, “Pity but he were a king;”

Leaving no posterity: ’Twas not their infirmity, It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be; Beauty brag, but ’tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair That are either true or fair; For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now, Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:

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.

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 unear’d 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, remember’d not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

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, remember’d not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself 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?

Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’ersnowed 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 distill’d, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d: Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place With beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-kill’d. That use is not forbidden usury Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

Look, whom she best endow’d she gave the more; Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish: She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;

… up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give. So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no determination;

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.

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:

But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

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;

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 owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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-lived phoenix in her blood;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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-lived 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.

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;

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 love’s fine wit.

Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart; My body is the frame wherein ’tis held, And perspective it is best painter’s art.

So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night, When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most …

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, Which I by lacking have supposed dead, And there reigns love and all love’s loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried.

“Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.”

Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorizing thy trespass with compare, Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more. Then if for my love thou my love receivest, I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest; But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury. Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made By looking on thee in the living day, When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!

All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, Injurious distance should not stop my way; For then despite of space I would be brought, From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.

Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade, my 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 besmear’d with sluttish time.

’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 yourself 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 allay’d, To-morrow sharpen’d in his former might: So, love, be thou;

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 crown’d, Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 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.

When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 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 brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of battering 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 Time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

… beggar born, And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly doctor-like controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

… unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly doctor-like controlling skill, And simple truth miscall’d simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Ah! wherefore with infection should he live, And with his presence grace impiety, That sin by him advantage should achieve And lace itself with his society? Why should false painting imitate his cheek And steal dead seeming of his living hue?

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, To tie up envy evermore enlarged: If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show, Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen 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 am shamed by that which I bring forth, And so should you, 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 ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

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 ruin’d choirs, 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, 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 nourish’d by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

But be contented: when that fell arrest Without all bail shall carry me away, My life hath in this line some interest, Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dost review The very part was consecrate to thee:

O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument;

So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.

O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument; So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste; These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear, And of this book this learning mayst thou taste.

Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgement making.

Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light And place my merit in the eye of scorn, Upon thy side against myself I’ll fight And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.

For thee against myself I’ll vow debate, For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss: Ah, do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;

They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!

How many gazers mightst thou lead away, If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! But do not so; I love thee in such sort As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue, Because I would not dull you with my song.

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.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still.

So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And, for they look’d 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.

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 confined doom.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:

And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

What’s in the brain that ink may character Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? What’s new to speak, what now to register, That may express my love or thy dear merit? Nothing, sweet boy;

What’s in the brain that ink may character Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? What’s 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 o’er the very same,

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.

Never believe, though in my nature reign’d All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stain’d, 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.

Alas, ’tis true I have gone here and there And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new;

In so profound abysm I throw all care Of others’ voices, that my adder’s 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.

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;

Your love and pity doth the impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o’er-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 steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.

Alas, why, fearing of time’s tyranny, Might I not then say “Now I love you best,” When I was certain o’er 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?

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;

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 worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s 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 proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s 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 proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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;

Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assured And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured: But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee; Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,

When not to be receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost which is so deem’d Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing: For why should others’ false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood?

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own:

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown; Unless this general evil they maintain, All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

That poor retention could not so much hold, Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score; Therefore to give them from me was I bold, To trust those tables that receive thee more:

To keep an adjunct to remember thee Were to import forgetfulness in me.

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; They are but dressings of a former sight.

Thy registers and thee I both defy, Not wondering at the present nor the past, For thy records and what we see doth lie, Made more or less by thy continual haste. This I do vow and this shall ever be;

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d, As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d. No, it was builded far from accident;

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:

Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be, And her quietus is to render thee.

In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:

To be so tickled, they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips, O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blest than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.

And, to be sure that is not false I swear, A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face, One on another’s neck, do witness bear Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place.

In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain, Have put on black and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.

Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not, To put fair truth upon so foul a face? In things right true my heart and eyes have erred, And to this false plague are they now transferr’d.

When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.

On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

O, call not me to justify the wrong That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue; Use power with power and slay me not by art.

Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows Her pretty looks have been mine enemies, And therefore from my face she turns my foes, That they elsewhere might dart their injuries: Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,

Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, Who leaves unsway’d the likeness of a man, Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be:

Only my plague thus far I count my gain, That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;

is this thy body’s end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

How can it? O, how can Love’s eye be true, That is so vex’d with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view;

The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

How can it? O, how can Love’s eye be true, That is so vex’d with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view; The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, When I against myself with thee partake? Do I not think on thee, when I forgot Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?

What merit do I in myself respect, That is so proud thy service to despise, When all my best doth worship thy defect, Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?

But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind; Those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.

O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?

Who taught thee how to make me love thee more The more I hear and see just cause of hate?

O, though I love what others do abhor, With others thou shouldst not abhor my state: If thy unworthiness raised love in me, More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

O, though I love what others do abhor, With others thou shouldst not abhor my state: If thy unworthiness raised love in me, More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

Love is too young to know what conscience is; Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; My soul doth tell my body that he may Triumph in love;

… thee And all my honest faith in thee is lost, For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness, Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy, And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness, Or made them swear against the thing they see;

For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I, To swear against the truth so foul a lie!

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep: A maid of Dian’s this advantage found, And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

This brand she quenched in a cool well by, Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual, Growing a bath and healthful remedy For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall, Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded A plaintful story from a sistering vale, My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;

“Father,” she says, “though in me you behold The injury of many a blasting hour, Let it not tell your judgement I am old;

Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:

I might as yet have been a spreading flower, Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied Love to myself and to no love beside.