Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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And this my hand against myself 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.

50

How heavy do I journey on the way,

When what I seek—my weary travel’s end—

Doth teach that ease 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.

51

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 rein 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.

52

So am I as the rich whose blessèd key

Can bring him to his sweet up-lockèd treasure,

The which he will not ev’ry hour survey,

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.

Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare

Since, seldom coming, in the 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.

53

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.

54

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 fade, by verse distils your truth.

55

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 judgement that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

56

Sweet love, renew thy force. Be it not said

Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,

Which but today by feeding is allayed,

Tomorrow sharpened in his former might.

So, love, be thou; although today thou fill

Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,

Tomorrow see again, and do not kill

The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.

Let this sad int’rim 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 blessed may be the view;

Or call it winter, which, being full of care,

Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.

57

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 naught

Save, where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love that in your will,

Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

58

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 yourself may privilege your time

To what you will; to you it doth belong

Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,

Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

59

If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burden 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 whe’er better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

O, sure I am the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

60

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.

61

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 tenor 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.

62

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 myself mine own worth do define

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me myself indeed,

Beated and chapped with tanned antiquity,

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;

Self so self-loving were iniquity.

’Tis thee, my self, that for myself I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

63

Against my love shall be as I am now,

With time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erwom;

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.

64

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 razed,

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 wat’ry main,

Increasing store with loss and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself 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.

65

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 battering 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.

66

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.

67

Ah, wherefore with infection should he live

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve

And lace itself 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.

68

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 borne

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, itself 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.

69

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,

Utt’ring 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.

70

That thou are 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.

71

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.

72

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.

73

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.

74

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.

75

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.

76

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.

77

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,

The 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.

78

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.

79

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 another 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 thyself dost pay.

80

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 barque, 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.

81

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.

82

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 these 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.

83

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

The barren tender of a poet’s debt;

And therefore have I slept in your report:

That you yourself, 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.

84

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 everywhere.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

85

My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still

While comments of your praise, richly compiled,

Reserve thy 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-refinèd 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.

86

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.

87

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.

Thyself 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.

88

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light

And place my merit in the eye of scorn,

Upon thy side against myself 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 shall win much glory;

And I by this will be a gainer too;

For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,

The injuries that to myself I do,

Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,

That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

89

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 myself 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 wrong,

And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

For thee, against myself I’ll vow debate;

For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.

90

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.

91

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’ cost,

Of more delight than hawks or 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 wretched make.

92

But do thy worst to steal thyself 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. 10

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.

93

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!

94

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;

They 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 itself 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.

95

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.

96

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 thronèd 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 transtate!

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.

97

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.

98

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 everything,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt 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.

99

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