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THE SONNETS |
by William Shakespeare |
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, |
Thy self 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 mak'st 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 tattered weed of small worth held: |
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies, |
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; |
To say within thine own deep 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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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, |