A few of Shakespears sonets

- 1 -

  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.

- 2 -
  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.


- 3 -
  Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
  Now is the time that face should form another,
  Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
  Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
  For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
  Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
  Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
  Of his self-love to stop posterity?  
  Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
  Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
  So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
  Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
    But if thou live remembered not to be,
    Die single and thine image dies with thee.


- 4 -
  Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,
  Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
  Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
  And being frank she lends to those are free:
  Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,
  The bounteous largess given thee to give?
  Profitless usurer why dost thou use
  So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
  For having traffic with thy self alone,
  Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive,
  Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
  What acceptable audit canst thou leave?  
    Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
    Which used lives th' executor to be.


- 5 -
  Those hours that with gentle work did frame
  The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
  Will play the tyrants to the very same,
  And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
  For never-resting time leads summer on
  To hideous winter and confounds him there,
  Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
  Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
  Then were not summer's distillation left
  A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
  Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
  Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
    But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
    Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

- 18 -
  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.


- 19 -
  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.


- 20 -
  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.


- 21 -
  
  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.


- 22 -
  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.

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