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The Sonnets of William
Shakespeare
-
CI.
- 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 fix'd;
- Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
- But best is best, if never intermix'd?'
- 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.
-
CII.
- MY love is strengthen'd, 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.
-
CIII.
- 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.
-
CIV.
- 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 turn'd
- In process of the seasons have I seen,
- Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
- 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.
-
CV.
- LET not my love be call'd 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.
-
CVI.
- 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 express'd
- 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 look'd but with divining eyes,
- They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
- For we, which now behold these present days,
- Had eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
-
CVII.
- 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.
-
CVIII.
- WHAT'S in the brain that ink may character
- Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
- What's new to speak, what new to register,
- That may express my love or thy dear merit?
- Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
- I must, each day say o'er the very same,
- Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
- Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
- 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.
-
CIX.
- O, NEVER say that I was false of heart,
- Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
- As easy might I from myself 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 myself bring water for my stain.
- Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
- All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
- That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
- To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
- For nothing this wide universe I call,
- Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
-
CX.
- ALAS, 'tis true I have gone here and there
- And made myself a motley to the view,
- Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
- Made old offences of affections new;
- Most true it is that I have look'd 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.
-
CXI.
- 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 renew'd;
- 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.
-
CXII.
- YOUR love and pity doth the impression fill
- Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
- For what care I who calls me well or ill,
- So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
- You are my all the world, and I must strive
- To know my shames and praises from your tongue:
- None else to me, nor I to none alive,
- That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
- 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.
-
CXIII.
- 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 rudest 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 makes mine eye untrue.
-
CXIV.
- OR whether doth my mind, being crown'd 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 poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin
- That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
-
CXV.
- 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 million'd 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 altering 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?
-
CXVI.
- LET me not to the marriage of true minds
- Admit impediments. Love is not love
- Which alters when it alteration finds,
- Or bends with the remover to remove:
- O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
- That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
- It is the star to every wandering bark,
- Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
- Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
- Within his bending sickle's compass come:
- Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
- But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
- If this be error and upon me proved,
- I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-
CXVII.
- 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 waken'd hate;
- Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
- The constancy and virtue of your love.
-
CXVIII.
- LIKE as, to make our appetites 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 tuff 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, to anticipate
- The ills that were not, grew to faults assured
- And brought to medicine a healthful state
- Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured:
- But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
- Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
-
CXIX.
- WHAT potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
- Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
- Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
- Still losing when I saw myself to win!
- What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
- Whilst it hath thought itself 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 ruin'd 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 ill thrice more than I have spent.
-
CXX.
- 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 hammer'd steel.
- For if you were by my unkindness shaken
- As I by yours, you've pass'd 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 remember'd
- My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
- And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
- The humble slave which wounded bosoms fits!
- But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
- Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
© 2002 Elena and Yakov Feldman