The Sonnets, William Shakespeare [large ebook reader .txt] 📗

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.

 

109

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.

 

110

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.

 

111

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.

 

112

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.

 

113

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.

 

114

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.

 

115

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.

 

116

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.

 

117

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.

 

118

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.

 

119

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.

 

120

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.

 

121

‘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.

 

122

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.

 

123

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.

 

124

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.

 

125

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