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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,
+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.
+
+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'.
+
+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.
+
+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 gracious and kind,
+Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,
+Make thee another self for love of me,
+That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
+  
+As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st,
+In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
+And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
+Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,
+Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,
+Without this folly, age, and cold decay,
+If all were minded so, the times should cease,
+And threescore year would make the world away:
+Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
+Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
+Look whom she best endowed, she gave thee 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 silvered o'er with white:  
+When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
+Which erst from heat did canopy the herd
+And summer's green all girded 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 your self, but love you are
+No longer yours, than you your self 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, then you were
+Your self again after your self's decease,
+When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.  
+Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
+Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
+Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
+And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
+O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,
+You had a father, let your son say so.
+
+Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
+And yet methinks I have astronomy,
+But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
+Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality,
+Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;
+Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
+Or say with princes if it shall go well
+By oft predict that I in heaven find.
+But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
+And constant stars in them I read such art
+As truth and beauty shall together thrive
+If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:  
+Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
+Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
+
+When I consider every thing that grows
+Holds in perfection but a little moment.
+That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
+Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
+When I perceive that men as plants increase,
+Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:
+Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
+And wear their brave state out of memory.
+Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
+Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
+Where wasteful time debateth with decay
+To change your day of youth to sullied night,
+And all in war with Time for love of you,
+As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
+  
+But wherefore do not you a mightier way
+Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time?
+And 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 your self, keeps your self still,
+And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.
+
+Who will believe my verse in time to come
+If it were filled 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 touched earthly faces.
+So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
+Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
+And your true rights be termed 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:
+Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
+And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
+And every fair from fair sometime declines,
+By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:  
+But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
+Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
+Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.
+
+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 fleet'st,
+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,
+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 pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
+Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
+  
+So is it not with me as with that muse,
+Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
+Who heaven it self 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 fixed in heaven's air:
+Let them say more that like of hearsay well,
+I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
+
+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 my self, but for thee will,
+Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary
+As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
+Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
+Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
+
+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'ercharged 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 expressed.
+O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
+To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
+
+Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,
+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.
+For through the painter must you see his skill,
+To find where your true image pictured lies,
+Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
+That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:
+Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,
+Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
+Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
+Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;  
+Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
+They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
+
+Let those who are in favour with their stars,
+Of public honour and proud titles boast,
+Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars
+Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;
+Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,
+But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
+And in themselves their pride lies buried,
+For at a frown they in their glory die.
+The painful warrior famoused for fight,
+After a thousand victories once foiled,
+Is from the book of honour razed quite,
+And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
+Then happy I that love and am beloved
+Where I may not remove nor be removed.
+  
+Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
+Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;
+To thee I send this written embassage
+To witness duty, not to show my wit.
+Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
+May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;
+But that I hope some good conceit of thine
+In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it:
+Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
+Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
+And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
+To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,
+Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
+Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
+
+Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
+The dear respose for limbs with travel tired,
+But then begins a journey in my head
+To work my mind, when body's work's expired.  
+For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
+Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
+And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
+Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
+Save that my soul's imaginary sight
+Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
+Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)
+Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
+Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
+For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.
+
+How can I then return in happy plight
+That am debarred the benefit of rest?
+When day's oppression is not eased by night,
+But day by night and night by day oppressed.
+And each (though enemies to either's reign)
+Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
+The one by toil, the other to complain
+How far I toil, still farther off from thee.  
+I tell the day to please him thou art bright,
+And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
+So flatter I the swart-complexioned 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 my self and curse my fate,
+Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
+Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
+Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
+With what I most enjoy contented least,
+Yet in these thoughts my self 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 remembered 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 drown an eye (unused to flow)
+For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
+And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
+And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight.
+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.
+How many a holy and obsequious tear
+Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
+As interest of the dead, which now appear,
+But things removed that hidden in thee lie.
+Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
+Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
+Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
+That due of many, now is thine alone.
+Their images I loved, I view in thee,
+And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.
+
+If thou survive my well-contented day,
+When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover
+And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
+These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:  
+Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
+And though they be outstripped by every pen,
+Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
+Exceeded by the height of happier men.
+O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
+'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:  
+Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
+With all triumphant splendour on my brow,
+But out alack, he was but one hour mine,
+The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
+Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,
+Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.
+
+Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
+And make me travel forth without my cloak,
+To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
+Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?
+'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
+To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
+For no man well of such a salve can speak,
+That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
+Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,
+Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,
+Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
+To him that bears the strong offence's cross.  
+Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
+And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.
+
+
+
+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,
+My self corrupting salving thy amiss,
+Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:
+For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
+Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
+And 'gainst my self a lawful plea commence:
+Such civil war is in my love and hate,
+That I an accessary needs must be,
+To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
+  
+Let me confess that we two must be twain,
+Although our undivided loves are one:
+So shall those blots that do with me remain,
+Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
+In our two loves there is but one respect,
+Though in our lives a separable spite,
+Which though it alter not love's sole effect,
+Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
+I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
+Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
+Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
+Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
+But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
+As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
+
+As a decrepit father takes delight,
+To see his active child do deeds of youth,
+So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite
+Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.  
+For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
+Or any of these all, or all, or more
+Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
+I make my love engrafted to this store:
+So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
+Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,
+That I in thy abundance am sufficed,
+And by a part of all thy glory live:
+Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,
+This wish I have, then ten times happy me.
+
+How can my muse want subject to invent
+While thou dost breathe that pour'st into my verse,
+Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,
+For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
+O give thy self the thanks if aught in me,
+Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,
+For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
+When thou thy self dost give invention light?  
+Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
+Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,
+And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
+Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
+If my slight muse do please these curious days,
+The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
+
+O how thy worth with manners may I sing,
+When thou art all the better part of me?
+What can mine own praise to mine own self bring:
+And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
+Even for this, let us divided live,
+And our dear love lose name of single one,
+That by this separation I may give:
+That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone:
+O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,
+Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,
+To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
+Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.  
+And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
+By praising him here who doth hence remain.
+
+Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,
+What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
+No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,
+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 thy self deceivest
+By wilful taste of what thy self 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 greater wrong, than hate's known injury.
+Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
+Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.
+  
+Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
+When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
+Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,
+For still temptation follows where thou art.
+Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
+Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.
+And when a woman woos, what woman's son,
+Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
+Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
+And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
+Who lead thee in their riot even there
+Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
+Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
+Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
+
+That thou hast her it is not all my grief,
+And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,
+That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
+A loss in love that touches me more nearly.  
+Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,
+Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,
+And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
+Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.
+If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
+And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,
+Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
+And both for my sake lay on me this cross,
+But here's the joy, my friend and I are one,
+Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.
+
+When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,
+For all the day they view things unrespected,
+But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
+And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
+Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright
+How would thy shadow's form, form happy show,
+To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
+When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!  
+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,
+No matter then although my foot did stand
+Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
+For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
+As soon as think the place where he would be.
+But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought
+To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
+But that so much of earth and water wrought,
+I must attend, time's leisure with my moan.  
+Receiving nought by elements so slow,
+But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
+
+The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
+Are both with thee, wherever I abide,
+The first my thought, the other my desire,
+These present-absent with swift motion slide.
+For when these quicker elements are gone
+In tender embassy of love to thee,
+My life being made of four, with two alone,
+Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.
+Until life's composition be recured,
+By those swift messengers returned from thee,
+Who even but now come back again assured,
+Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.
+This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,
+I send them back again and straight grow sad.
+  
+Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
+How to divide the conquest of thy sight,
+Mine eye, my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
+My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,
+My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
+(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)
+But the defendant doth that plea deny,
+And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
+To side this title is impanelled
+A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
+And by their verdict is determined
+The clear eye's moiety, and the dear heart's part.
+As thus, mine eye's due is thy outward part,
+And my heart's right, thy inward love of heart.
+
+Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
+And each doth good turns now unto the other,
+When that mine eye is famished for a look,
+Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;  
+With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,
+And to the painted banquet bids my heart:
+Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,
+And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.
+So either by thy picture or my love,
+Thy self away, art present still with me,
+For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
+And I am still with them, and they with thee.
+Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
+Awakes my heart, to heart's and eye's delight.
+
+How careful was I when I took my way,
+Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
+That to my use it might unused stay
+From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
+But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
+Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
+Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
+Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.  
+Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
+Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
+Within the gentle closure of my breast,
+From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,
+And even thence thou wilt be stol'n I fear,
+For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
+
+Against that time (if ever that time come)
+When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
+When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
+Called to that audit by advised respects,
+Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
+And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,
+When love converted from the thing it was
+Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
+Against that time do I ensconce me here
+Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
+And this my hand, against my self uprear,
+To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,  
+To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,
+Since why to love, I can allege no cause.
+
+How heavy do I journey on the way,
+When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
+Doth teach that case and that repose to say
+'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.'
+The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
+Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
+As if by some instinct the wretch did know
+His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
+The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
+That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
+Which heavily he answers with a groan,
+More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
+For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
+My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
+  
+Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,
+Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,
+From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?
+Till I return of posting is no need.
+O what excuse will my poor beast then find,
+When swift extremity can seem but slow?
+Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,
+In winged speed no motion shall I know,
+Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,
+Therefore desire (of perfect'st love being made)
+Shall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race,
+But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,
+Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,
+Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.
+
+So am I as the rich whose blessed key,
+Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
+The which he will not every hour survey,
+For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.  
+Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
+Since seldom coming in that long year set,
+Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
+Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
+So is the time that keeps you as my chest
+Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
+To make some special instant special-blest,
+By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.
+Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
+Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.
+
+What is your substance, whereof are you made,
+That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
+Since every one, hath every one, one shade,
+And you but one, can every shadow lend:
+Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,
+Is poorly imitated after you,
+On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
+And you in Grecian tires are painted new:  
+Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
+The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
+The other as your bounty doth appear,
+And you in every blessed shape we know.
+In all external grace you have some part,
+But you like none, none you for constant heart.
+
+O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
+By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
+The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
+For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:
+The canker blooms have full as deep a dye,
+As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
+Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
+When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
+But for their virtue only is their show,
+They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,
+Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,
+Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:  
+And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
+When that shall vade, by 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, besmeared with sluttish time.
+When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
+And broils root out the work of masonry,
+Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn:
+The living record of your memory.
+'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 your self 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 allayed,
+To-morrow sharpened in his former might.
+So love be thou, although to-day thou fill
+Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
+To-morrow see again, and do not kill
+The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:
+Let this sad interim like the ocean be
+Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,
+Come daily to the banks, that when they see:
+Return of love, more blest may be the view.
+Or call it winter, which being full of care,
+Makes summer's welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.
+
+Being your slave what should I do but tend,
+Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
+I have no precious time at all to spend;
+Nor services to do till you require.  
+Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
+Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
+Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
+When you have bid your servant once adieu.
+Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,
+Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
+But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
+Save where you are, how happy you make those.
+So true a fool is love, that in your will,
+(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
+
+That god forbid, that made me first your slave,
+I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
+Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave,
+Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
+O let me suffer (being at your beck)
+Th' imprisoned absence of your liberty,
+And patience tame to sufferance bide each check,
+Without accusing you of injury.  
+Be where you list, your charter is so strong,
+That you your self may privilage your time
+To what you will, to you it doth belong,
+Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.
+I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
+Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
+
+If there be nothing new, but that which is,
+Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
+Which labouring for invention bear amis
+The second burthen of a former child!
+O that record could with a backward look,
+Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
+Show me your image in some antique book,
+Since mind at first in character was done.
+That I might see what the old world could say,
+To this composed wonder of your frame,
+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 crowned,
+Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
+And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
+Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
+And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
+Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
+And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
+And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
+Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
+  
+Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
+My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
+Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
+While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
+Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
+So far from home into my deeds to pry,
+To find out shames and idle hours in me,
+The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?
+O no, thy love though much, is not so great,
+It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
+Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
+To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
+For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
+From me far off, with others all too near.
+
+Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
+And all my soul, and all my every part;
+And for this sin there is no remedy,
+It is so grounded inward in my heart.  
+Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
+No shape so true, no truth of such account,
+And for my self mine own worth do define,
+As I all other in all worths surmount.
+But when my glass shows me my self indeed
+beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,
+Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:
+Self, so self-loving were iniquity.
+'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,
+Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
+
+Against my love shall be as I am now
+With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,
+When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
+With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn
+Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,
+And all those beauties whereof now he's king
+Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
+Stealing away the treasure of his spring:  
+For such a time do I now fortify
+Against confounding age's cruel knife,
+That he shall never cut from memory
+My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
+His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
+And they shall live, and he in them still green.
+
+When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
+The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,
+When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,
+And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.
+When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
+Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
+And the firm soil win of the watery main,
+Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.
+When I have seen such interchange of State,
+Or state it self 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'ersways 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 batt'ring 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.
+  
+Tired with all these for restful death I cry,
+As to behold desert a beggar born,
+And needy nothing trimmed 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 miscalled 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 it self with his society?  
+Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
+And steal dead seeming of his living hue?
+Why should poor beauty indirectly seek,
+Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
+Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,
+Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,
+For she hath no exchequer now but his,
+And proud of many, lives upon his gains?
+O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,
+In days long since, before these last so bad.
+
+Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
+When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
+Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
+Or durst inhabit on a living brow:
+Before the golden tresses of the dead,
+The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
+To live a second life on second head,
+Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:  
+In him those holy antique hours are seen,
+Without all ornament, it self and true,
+Making no summer of another's green,
+Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
+And him as for a map doth Nature store,
+To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
+
+Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view,
+Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:
+All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that due,
+Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
+Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,
+But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,
+In other accents do this praise confound
+By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
+They look into the beauty of thy mind,
+And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,
+Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)
+To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:  
+But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
+The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
+
+
+
+That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
+For slander's mark was ever yet the fair,
+The ornament of beauty is suspect,
+A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
+So thou be good, slander doth but approve,
+Thy worth the greater being wooed of time,
+For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
+And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
+Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,
+Either not assailed, or victor being charged,
+Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
+To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
+If some suspect of ill masked 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 love you so,
+That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
+If thinking on me then should make you woe.
+O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
+When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
+Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
+But let your love even with my life decay.
+Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
+And mock you with me after I am gone.
+
+
+
+O lest the world should task you to recite,
+What merit lived in me that you should love
+After my death (dear love) forget me quite,
+For you in me can nothing worthy prove.  
+Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
+To do more for me than mine own desert,
+And hang more praise upon deceased I,
+Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
+O lest your true love may seem false in this,
+That you for love speak well of me untrue,
+My name be buried where my body is,
+And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.
+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 ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
+In me thou seest 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 seest 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 nourished by.
+This thou perceiv'st, 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,
+The earth can have but earth, which is his due,
+My spirit is thine the better part of me,
+So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
+The prey of worms, my body being dead,
+The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
+Too base of thee to be remembered,  
+The worth of that, is that which it contains,
+And that is this, and this with thee remains.
+
+
+
+So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
+Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
+And for the peace of you I hold such strife
+As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
+Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
+Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
+Now counting best to be with you alone,
+Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,
+Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
+And by and by clean starved for a look,
+Possessing or pursuing no delight
+Save what is had, or must from you be took.
+Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
+Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
+
+
+  
+Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
+So far from variation or quick change?
+Why with the time do I not glance aside
+To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
+Why write I still all one, ever the same,
+And keep invention in a noted weed,
+That every word doth almost tell my name,
+Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
+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.  
+The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
+Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
+Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know,
+Time's thievish progress to eternity.
+Look what thy memory cannot contain,
+Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
+Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
+To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
+These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
+Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.
+
+
+
+So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,
+And found such fair assistance in my verse,
+As every alien pen hath got my use,
+And under thee their poesy disperse.
+Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,
+And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
+Have added feathers to the learned's wing,
+And given grace a double majesty.
+Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
+Whose influence is thine, and born of thee,
+In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
+And arts with thy sweet graces graced be.
+But thou art all my art, and dost advance
+As high as learning, my rude ignorance.
+
+
+
+Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
+My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
+But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
+And my sick muse doth give an other place.
+I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument
+Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
+Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,
+He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,
+He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,
+From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give
+And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
+No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.  
+Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
+Since what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.
+
+
+
+O how I faint when I of you do write,
+Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
+And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
+To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
+But since your worth (wide as the ocean is)
+The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
+My saucy bark (inferior far to his)
+On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
+Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
+Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,
+Or (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat,
+He of tall building, and of goodly pride.
+Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
+The worst was this, my love was my decay.
+
+
+  
+Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
+Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
+From hence your memory death cannot take,
+Although in me each part will be forgotten.
+Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
+Though I (once gone) to all the world must die,
+The earth can yield me but a common grave,
+When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie,
+Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
+Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
+And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
+When all the breathers of this world are dead,
+You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
+Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
+
+
+
+I grant thou wert not married to my muse,
+And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
+The dedicated words which writers use
+Of their fair subject, blessing every book.  
+Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
+Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
+And therefore art enforced to seek anew,
+Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
+And do so love, yet when they have devised,
+What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
+Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathized,
+In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.
+And their gross painting might be better used,
+Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.
+
+
+
+I never saw that you did painting need,
+And therefore to your fair no painting set,
+I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,
+That barren tender of a poet's debt:
+And therefore have I slept in your report,
+That you your self being extant well might show,
+How far a modern quill doth come too short,
+Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.  
+This silence for my sin you did impute,
+Which shall be most my glory being dumb,
+For I impair not beauty being mute,
+When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
+There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,
+Than both your poets can in praise devise.
+
+
+
+Who is it that says most, which can say more,
+Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you?
+In whose confine immured is the store,
+Which should example where your equal grew.
+Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,
+That to his subject lends not some small glory,
+But he that writes of you, if he can tell,
+That you are you, so dignifies his story.
+Let him but copy what in you is writ,
+Not making worse what nature made so clear,
+And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
+Making his style admired every where.  
+You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
+Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.
+
+
+
+My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still,
+While comments of your praise richly compiled,
+Reserve their character with golden quill,
+And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.
+I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,
+And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,
+To every hymn that able spirit affords,
+In polished form of well refined pen.
+Hearing you praised, I say 'tis so, 'tis true,
+And to the most of praise add something more,
+But that is in my thought, whose love to you
+(Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,
+Then others, for the breath of words respect,
+Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
+
+
+  
+Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
+Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you,
+That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
+Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
+Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,
+Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
+No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
+Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
+He nor that affable familiar ghost
+Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
+As victors of my silence cannot boast,
+I was not sick of any fear from thence.
+But when your countenance filled up his line,
+Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.
+
+
+
+Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
+And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
+The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:
+My bonds in thee are all determinate.  
+For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
+And for that riches where is my deserving?
+The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
+And so my patent back again is swerving.
+Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
+Or me to whom thou gav'st 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 my self I'll fight,
+And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:
+With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
+Upon thy part I can set down a story
+Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:
+That thou in losing me, shalt win much glory:  
+And I by this will be a gainer too,
+For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
+The injuries that to my self I do,
+Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
+Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
+That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.
+
+
+
+Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
+And I will comment upon that offence,
+Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:
+Against thy reasons making no defence.
+Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,
+To set a form upon desired change,
+As I'll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,
+I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:
+Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,
+Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
+Lest I (too much profane) should do it wronk:
+And haply of our old acquaintance tell.  
+For thee, against my self 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 conquered woe,
+Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
+To linger out a purposed overthrow.
+If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
+When other petty griefs have done their spite,
+But in the onset come, so shall I taste
+At first the very worst of fortune's might.
+And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
+Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.
+
+
+  
+Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
+Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
+Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:
+Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.
+And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
+Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
+But these particulars are not my measure,
+All these I better in one general best.
+Thy love is better than high birth to me,
+Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' costs,
+Of more delight than hawks and horses be:
+And having thee, of all men's pride I boast.
+Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,
+All this away, and me most wretchcd make.
+
+
+
+But do thy worst to steal thy self away,
+For term of life thou art assured mine,
+And life no longer than thy love will stay,
+For it depends upon that love of thine.  
+Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
+When in the least of them my life hath end,
+I see, a better state to me belongs
+Than that, which on thy humour doth depend.
+Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,
+Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,
+O what a happy title do I find,
+Happy to have thy love, happy to die!
+But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot?
+Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.
+
+
+
+So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
+Like a deceived husband, so love's face,
+May still seem love to me, though altered new:
+Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.
+For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
+Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,
+In many's looks, the false heart's history
+Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.  
+But heaven in thy creation did decree,
+That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,
+Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
+Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
+How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
+If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.
+
+
+
+They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
+That do not do the thing, they most do show,
+Who moving others, are themselves as stone,
+Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
+They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
+And husband nature's riches from expense,
+Tibey 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 it self, 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!
+That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
+(Making lascivious comments on thy sport)
+Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,
+Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
+O what a mansion have those vices got,
+Which for their habitation chose out thee,
+Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
+And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!
+Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,
+The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
+
+
+  
+Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
+Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,
+Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:
+Thou mak'st faults graces, that to thee resort:
+As on the finger of a throned queen,
+The basest jewel will be well esteemed:
+So are those errors that in thee are seen,
+To truths translated, and for true things deemed.
+How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
+If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
+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 burden of the prime,
+Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease:
+Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
+But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,
+For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
+And thou away, the very birds are mute.
+Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
+That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
+
+
+
+From you have I been absent in the spring,
+When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)
+Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:
+That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
+Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
+Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
+Could make me any summer's story tell:
+Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:  
+Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
+Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,
+They were but sweet, but figures of delight:
+Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
+Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
+As with your shadow I with these did play.
+
+
+
+The forward violet thus did I chide,
+Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
+If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
+Which on thy soft check for complexion dwells,
+In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
+The lily I condemned for thy hand,
+And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair,
+The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
+One blushing shame, another white despair:
+A third nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
+And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,
+But for his theft in pride of all his growth  
+A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
+More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
+But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.
+
+
+
+Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long,
+To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
+Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
+Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
+Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
+In gentle numbers time so idly spent,
+Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
+And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
+Rise resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
+If time have any wrinkle graven there,
+If any, be a satire to decay,
+And make time's spoils despised everywhere.
+Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
+So thou prevent'st his scythe, and crooked knife.
+
+
+
+O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,
+For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
+Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
+So dost thou too, and therein dignified:
+Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
+'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
+Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:
+But best is best, if never intermixed'?
+Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
+Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,
+To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:
+And to be praised of ages yet to be.
+Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,
+To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.
+
+
+
+My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,
+I love not less, though less the show appear,
+That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,  
+The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
+Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
+When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
+As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
+And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
+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.
+
+
+
+Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,
+That having such a scope to show her pride,
+The argument all bare is of more worth
+Than when it hath my added praise beside.
+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.
+
+
+
+To me fair friend you never can be old,
+For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
+Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,
+Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
+Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,
+In process of the seasons have I seen,
+Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
+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 perceived,
+So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand  
+Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
+For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,
+Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
+
+
+
+Let not my love be called 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 confined,
+One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
+Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
+Fair, kind, and true, 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 lived alone.
+Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
+
+
+
+When in the chronicle of wasted time,
+I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
+And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
+In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,
+Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
+Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
+I see their antique pen would have expressed,
+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.
+
+
+
+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.
+The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
+And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
+Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
+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 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, 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 hallowed thy fair name.
+So that eternal love in love's 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.
+
+
+
+O never say that I was false of heart,
+Though absence seemed 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 ranged,
+Like him that travels I return again,
+Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
+So that my self bring water for my stain,
+Never believe though in my nature reigned,
+All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
+That it could so preposterously be stained,  
+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 my self a motley to the view,
+Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
+Made old offences of affections new.
+Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
+Askance and strangely: but by all above,
+These blenches gave my heart another youth,
+And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
+Now all is done, have 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 confined.
+Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
+Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
+
+
+
+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 subdued
+To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
+Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
+Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,
+Potions of eisel 'gainst 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.
+
+
+
+Your love and pity doth th' impression fill,
+Which vulgar scandal stamped 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 steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
+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:
+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 rud'st or gentlest sight,
+The most sweet favour or deformed'st 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.
+
+
+
+Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you
+Drink up the monarch's 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 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing,
+And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,
+Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,  
+And to his palate doth prepare the cup.
+If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin,
+That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
+
+
+
+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 millioned accidents
+Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
+Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
+Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things:
+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;
+It is the star to every wand'ring 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.
+
+
+
+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-purchased 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 wakened hate:
+Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
+The constancy and virtue of your love.
+
+
+
+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 ne'er-cloying sweetness,
+To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
+And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,  
+To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
+Thus policy in love t' 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 feil sick of you.
+
+
+
+What potions have I drunk of Siren tears
+Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
+Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
+Still losing when I saw my self to win!
+What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
+Whilst it hath thought it self 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 ruined love when it is built anew  
+Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
+So I return rebuked to my content,
+And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.
+
+
+
+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 hammered steel.
+For if you were by my unkindness shaken
+As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time,
+And I a tyrant have no leisure taken
+To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
+O that our night of woe might have remembered
+My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
+And soon to you, as you to me then tendered
+The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
+But that your trespass now becomes a fee,
+Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
+
+
+
+'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
+When not to be, receives reproach of being,
+And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
+Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
+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.
+
+
+
+Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
+Full charactered with lasting memory,
+Which shall above that idle rank remain  
+Beyond all date even to eternity.
+Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
+Have faculty by nature to subsist,
+Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
+Of thee, thy record never can be missed:
+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:
+Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,
+What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
+And rather make them born to our desire,  
+Than think that we before have heard them told:
+Thy registers and thee I both defy,
+Not wond'ring 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 unfathered,
+As subject to time's love or to time's hate,
+Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
+No it was builded far from accident,
+It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
+Under the blow of thralled discontent,
+Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
+It fears not policy that heretic,
+Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
+But all alone stands hugely politic,  
+That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
+To this I witness call the fools of time,
+Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
+
+
+
+Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
+With my extern the outward honouring,
+Or laid great bases for eternity,
+Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
+Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
+Lose all, and more by paying too much rent
+For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,
+Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?
+No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
+And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
+Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
+But mutual render, only me for thee.
+Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul
+When most impeached, stands least in thy control.
+
+
+
+O thou my lovely boy who in thy power,
+Dost hold Time's fickle glass his fickle hour:
+Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st,
+Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
+If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)
+As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
+She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
+May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
+Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,
+She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!
+Her audit (though delayed) answered 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 slandered with a bastard shame,
+For since each hand hath put on nature's power,  
+Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
+Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
+But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
+Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
+Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
+At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
+Slandering creation with a false esteem,
+Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
+That every tongue says beauty should look so.
+
+
+
+How oft when thou, my music, music play'st,
+Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
+With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st
+The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
+Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
+To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
+Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
+At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand.
+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.
+
+
+
+Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
+Is lust in action, and till action, lust
+Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame,
+Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
+Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
+Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
+Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
+On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
+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:
+I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
+But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
+And in some perfumes is there more delight,
+Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
+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.
+Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,
+Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;
+To say they err, I dare not be so bold,
+Although I swear it to my self alone.
+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.
+And truly not the morning sun of heaven  
+Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
+Nor that full star that ushers in the even
+Doth half that glory to the sober west
+As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
+O let it then as well beseem thy heart
+To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
+And suit thy pity like in every part.
+Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
+And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
+
+
+
+Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
+For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;
+Is't not enough to torture me alone,
+But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
+Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,
+And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,
+Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,
+A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:
+Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,  
+But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail,
+Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,
+Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.
+And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,
+Perforce am thine and all that is in me.
+
+
+
+So now I have confessed that he is thine,
+And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,
+My self I'll forfeit, so that other mine,
+Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:
+But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
+For thou art covetous, and he is kind,
+He learned but surety-like to write for me,
+Under that bond that him as fist doth bind.
+The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
+Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,
+And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,
+So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
+Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,  
+He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
+
+
+
+Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
+And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in over-plus,
+More than enough am I that vex thee still,
+To thy sweet will making addition thus.
+Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
+Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
+Shall will in others seem right gracious,
+And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
+The sea all water, yet receives rain still,
+And in abundance addeth to his store,
+So thou being rich in will add to thy will
+One will of mine to make thy large will more.
+Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,
+Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'
+
+
+
+If thy soul check thee that I come so near,  
+Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy 'Will',
+And will thy soul knows is admitted there,
+Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.
+'Will', will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
+Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one,
+In things of great receipt with case we prove,
+Among a number one is reckoned none.
+Then in the number let me pass untold,
+Though in thy store's account I one must be,
+For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,
+That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.
+Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
+And then thou lov'st me for my name is Will.
+
+
+
+Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
+That they behold and see not what they see?
+They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
+Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.
+If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,  
+Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
+Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
+Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
+Why should my heart think that a several plot,
+Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?
+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 transferred.
+
+
+
+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 untutored 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 suppressed:
+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 flattered 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,
+Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,
+Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,
+What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
+Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
+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.
+If I might teach thee wit better it were,
+Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,
+As testy sick men when their deaths be near,
+No news but health from their physicians know.
+For if I should despair I should grow mad,
+And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
+Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
+Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
+That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
+Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
+
+
+
+In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,  
+For they in thee a thousand errors note,
+But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
+Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.
+Nor are mine cars with thy tongue's tune delighted,
+Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
+Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
+To any sensual feast with thee alone:
+But my five wits, nor my five senses can
+Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
+Who leaves unswayed 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,
+Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,  
+That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,
+And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
+Robbed others' beds' revenues of their rents.
+Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov'st those,
+Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,
+Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,
+Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
+If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
+By self-example mayst thou be denied.
+
+
+
+Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,
+One of her feathered creatures broke away,
+Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch
+In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:
+Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
+Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,
+To follow that which flies before her face:
+Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
+So run'st thou after that which flies from thee,  
+Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind,
+But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:
+And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind.
+So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
+If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
+
+
+
+Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
+Which like two spirits do suggest me still,
+The better angel is a man right fair:
+The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
+To win me soon to hell my female evil,
+Tempteth my better angel from my side,
+And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:
+Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
+And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
+Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,
+But being both from me both to each friend,
+I guess one angel in another's hell.
+Yet this shall I ne'er know but live in doubt,  
+Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
+
+
+
+Those lips that Love's own hand did make,
+Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate',
+To me that languished for her sake:
+But when she saw my woeful state,
+Straight in her heart did mercy come,
+Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,
+Was used in giving gentle doom:
+And taught it thus anew to greet:
+'I hate' she altered with an end,
+That followed it as gentle day,
+Doth follow night who like a fiend
+From heaven to hell is flown away.
+'I hate', from hate away she threw,
+And saved my life saying 'not you'.
+
+Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,  
+My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
+Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
+Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
+Why so large cost having so short a lease,
+Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
+Shall worms inheritors of this excess
+Eat up thy charge? 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,
+Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please:
+My reason the physician to my love,  
+Angry that his prescriptions are not kept
+Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
+Desire is death, which physic did except.
+Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
+And frantic-mad with evermore unrest,
+My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
+At random from the truth vainly expressed.
+For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
+Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
+
+O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,
+Which have no correspondence with true sight,
+Or if they have, where is my judgment fled,
+That censures falsely what they see aright?
+If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
+What means the world to say it is not so?
+If it be not, then love doth well denote,
+Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,
+How can it? O how can love's eye be true,  
+That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
+No marvel then though I mistake my view,
+The sun it self 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 my self with thee partake?
+Do I not think on thee when I forgot
+Am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?
+Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,
+On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon,
+Nay if thou lour'st on me do I not spend
+Revenge upon my self with present moan?
+What merit do I in my self 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 lov'st, 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.
+
+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, flesh stays no farther reason,
+But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
+As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,
+He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
+To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
+No want of conscience hold it that I call,
+Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.
+
+In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
+But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,
+In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
+In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
+But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,  
+When I break twenty? I am perjured most,
+For all my vows are oaths but to misuse 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 be.
+
+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:
+Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love,
+A dateless lively heat still to endure,
+And grew a seeting bath which yet men prove,
+Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:
+But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,  
+The boy for trial needs would touch my breast,
+I sick withal the help of bath desired,
+And thither hied a sad distempered guest.
+But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,
+Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress' eyes.
+
+The little Love-god lying once asleep,
+Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
+Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,
+Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,
+The fairest votary took up that fire,
+Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,
+And so the general of hot desire,
+Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.
+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 discased, but I my mistress' thrall,
+Came there for cure and this by that I prove,  
+Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
+
+
+                THE END