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

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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No marvel then though I mistake my view:

The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning love, with tears thou keep’st me blind

Lest eyes, well seeing, thy foul faults should find!

149

Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not

When I against myself with thee partake?

Do I not think on thee when I forgot

Am of myself, 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 myself with present moan?

What merit do I in myself 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.

150

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.

151

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.

152

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 eye

To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

153

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 seething 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.

154

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 diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,

Came there for cure; and this by that I prove:

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

A Lover’s Complaint

From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded

A plaintful story from a sist‘ring vale,

My spirits t’attend this double voice accorded,

And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;

Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,

Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,

Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.

Upon her head a plaited hive of straw

Which fortified her visage from the sun,

Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw

The carcass of a beauty spent and done.

Time had not scythèd all that youth begun,

Nor youth all quit; but spite of heaven’s fell rage,

Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,

Which on it had conceited characters,

Laund’ring the silken figures in the brine

That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,

And often reading what contents it bears;

As often shrieking undistinguished woe

In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride

As they did batt‘ry to the spheres intend;

Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied

To th’orbèd earth; sometimes they do extend

Their view right on; anon their gazes lend

To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,

The mind and sight distractedly commixed.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plait,

Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;

For some, untucked, descended her sheaved hat,

Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside.

Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,

And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,

Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favours from a maund she drew

Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,

Which one by one she in a river threw

Upon whose weeping margin she was set;

Like usury applying wet to wet,

Or monarch’s hands that lets not bounty fall

Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one

Which she perused, sighed, tore, and gave the flood;

Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,

Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;

Found yet more letters sadly penned in blood,

With sleided silk feat and affectedly

Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,

And often kissed, and often ‘gan to tear;

Cried ‘O false blood, thou register of lies,

What unapprovèd witness dost thou bear!

Ink would have seemed more black and damned

here!’

This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,

Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,

Sometime a blusterer that the ruffle knew

Of court, of city, and had let go by

The swiftest hours observed as they flew,

Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,

And, privileged by age, desires to know

In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat,

And comely distant sits he by her side,

When he again desires her, being sat,

Her grievance with his hearing to divide.

If that from him there may be aught applied

Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,

’Tis promised in the charity of age.

‘Father,’ she says, ‘though in me you behold

The injury of many a blasting hour,

Let it not tell your judgement I am old;

Not age, but sorrow over me hath power.

I might as yet have been a spreading flower,

Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied

Love to myself, and to no love beside.

‘But, woe is me, too early I attended

A youthful suit—it was to gain my grace—

O, one by nature’s outwards so commended

That maidens’ eyes stuck over all his face.

Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place,

And when in his fair parts she did abide

She was new-lodged and newly deified.

‘His browny locks did hang in crooked curls,

And every light occasion of the wind

Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.

What’s sweet to do, to do will aptly find.

Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind,

For on his visage was in little drawn

What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.

‘Small show of man was yet upon his chin;

His phoenix down began but to appear,

Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin

Whose bare outbragged the web it seemed to wear;

Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear,

And nice affections wavering stood in doubt

If best were as it was, or best without.

‘His qualities were beauteous as his form,

For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free.

Yet if men moved him, was he such a storm

As oft twixt May and April is to see

When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.

His rudeness so with his authorized youth

Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.

‘Well could he ride, and often men would say

“That horse his mettle from his rider takes;

Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,

What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop

he makes!”

And controversy hence a question takes,

Whether the horse by him became his deed,

Or he his manège by th’ well-doing steed.

‘But quickly on this side the verdict went:

His real habitude gave life and grace

To appertainings and to ornament,

Accomplished in himself, not in his case.

All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,

Came for additions; yet their purposed trim

Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

‘So on the tip of his subduing tongue

All kind of arguments and question deep,

All replication prompt, and reason strong,

For his advantage still did wake and sleep.

To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,

He had the dialect and different skill,

Catching all passions in his craft of will,

‘That he did in the general bosom reign

Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted,

To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain

In personal duty, following where he haunted.

Consents bewitched, ere he desire, have granted,

And dialogued for him what he would say,

Asked their own wills, and made their wills obey.

‘Many there were that did his picture get

To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind,

Like fools that in th’imagination set

The goodly objects which abroad they find

Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned,

And labour in more pleasures to bestow them

Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.

‘So many have, that never touched his hand,

Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.

My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,

And was my own fee-simple, not in part,

What with his art in youth, and youth in art,

Threw my affections in his charmed power,

Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

‘Yet did I not, as some my equals did,

Demand of him, nor being desired yielded.

Finding myself in honour so forbid,

With safest distance I mine honour shielded.

Experience for me many bulwarks builded

Of proofs new bleeding, which remained the foil

Of this false jewel and his amorous spoil.

‘But ah, who ever shunned by precedent

The destined ill she must herself assay,

Or forced examples ’gainst her own content

To put the by-past perils in her way?

Counsel may stop a while what will not stay,

For when we rage, advice is often seen,

By blunting us, to make our wills more keen.

‘Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood

That we must curb it upon others’ proof,

To be forbod the sweets that seems so good

For fear of harms that preach in our behoof.

O appetite, from judgement stand aloof!

The one a palate hath that needs will taste,

Though reason weep, and cry it is thy last.

‘For further I could say this man’s untrue,

And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;

Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew,

Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling,

Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling,

Thought characters and words merely but art,

And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.

‘And long upon these terms I held my city

Till thus he gan besiege me: “Gentle maid,

Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,

And be not of my holy vows afraid.

That’s to ye sworn to none was ever said;

For feasts of love I have been called unto,

Till now did ne’er invite nor never woo.

‘ “All my offences that abroad you see

Are errors of the blood, none of the mind.

Love made them not; with acture they may be,

Where neither party is nor true nor kind.

They sought their shame that so their shame did find,

And so much less of shame in me remains

By how much of me their reproach contains.

‘ “Among the many that mine eyes have seen,

Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed

Or my affection put to th’ smallest teen,

Or any of my leisures ever charmed.

Harm have I done to them, but ne’er was harmed;

Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,

And reigned commanding in his monarchy.

‘ “Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me

Of pallid pearls and rubies red as blood,

Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me

Of grief and blushes, aptly understood

In bloodless white and the encrimsoned mood—

Effects of terror and dear modesty,

Encamped in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

‘ “And lo, behold, these talents of their hair,

With twisted mettle amorously impleached,

I have received from many a several fair,

Their kind acceptance weepingly beseeched,

With th’annexations of fair gems enriched,

And deep-brained sonnets that did amplify

Each stone’s dear nature, worth, and quality.

‘ “The diamond?—why, ’twas beautiful and hard,

Whereto his invised properties did tend;

The deep-green em’rald, in whose fresh regard

Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;

The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend

With objects manifold; each several stone,

With wit well blazoned, smiled or made some moan.

‘ “Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,

Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,

Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,

But yield them up where I myself must render—

That is to you, my origin and ender;

For these of force must your oblations be,

Since I their altar, you enpatron me.

‘ “O then advance of yours that phraseless hand

Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise.

Take all these similes to your own command,

Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise.

What me, your minister for you, obeys,

Works under you, and to your audit comes

Their distract parcels in combined sums.

‘ “Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,

A sister sanctified of holiest note,

Which late her noble suit in court did shun,

Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;

For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,

But kept cold distance, and did thence remove

To spend her living in eternal love.

‘ “But O, my sweet, what labour is’t to leave

The thing we have not, mast’ring what not strives,

Planing the place which did no form receive,

Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves!

She that her fame so to herself contrives

The scars of battle scapeth by the flight,

And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

‘ “O, pardon me, in that my boast is true!

The accident which brought me to her eye

Upon the moment did her force subdue,

And now she would the caged cloister fly.

Religious love put out religion’s eye.

Not to be tempted would she be immured,

And now, to tempt, all liberty procured.

‘ “How mighty then you are, O hear me tell!

The broken bosoms that to me belong

Have emptied all their fountains in my well,

And mine I pour your ocean all among.

I strong o’er them, and you o’er me being strong,

Must for your victory us all congest,

As compound love to physic your cold breast.

‘ “My parts had power to charm a sacred nun,

Who disciplined, ay dieted in grace,

Believed her eyes when they t’ assail begun,

All vows and consecrations giving place.

O most potential love: vow, bond, nor space

In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine,

For thou art all, and all things else are thine.

‘ “When thou impressest, what are precepts worth

Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame,

How coldly those impediments stand forth

Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame.

Love’s arms are peace, ’gainst rule, ‘gainst sense,

’gainst shame;

And sweetens in the suff’ring pangs it bears

The aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears.

‘ “Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,

Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine,

And supplicant their sighs to you extend

To leave the batt’ry that you make ’gainst mine,

Lending soft audience to my sweet design,

And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath

That shall prefer and undertake my troth.”

‘This said, his wat’ry eyes he did dismount,

Whose sights till then were levelled on my face.

Each cheek a river running from a fount

With brinish current downward flowed apace.

O, how the channel to the stream gave grace,

Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses

That flame through water which their hue encloses.

‘O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear!

But with the inundation of the eyes

What rocky heart to water will not wear?

What breast so cold that is not warmed here?

O cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath,

Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

‘For lo, his passion, but an art of craft,

Even there resolved my reason into tears.

There my white stole of chastity I daffed,

Shook off my sober guards and civil fears;

Appear to him as he to me appears,

All melting, though our drops this diff’rence bore:

His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.

‘In him a plenitude of subtle matter,

Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,

Of burning blushes or of weeping water,

Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,

In either’s aptness, as it best deceives,

To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,

Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows,

‘That not a heart which in his level came

Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,

Showing fair nature is both kind and tame,

And, veiled in them, did win whom he would maim.

Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;

When he most burned in heart-wished luxury,

He preached pure maid and praised cold chastity.

‘Thus merely with the garment of a grace

The naked and concealed fiend he covered,

That th’unexperient gave the tempter place,

Which like a cherubin above them hovered.

Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered?

Ay me, I fell, and yet do question make

What I should do again for such a sake.

‘O that infected moisture of his eye,

O that false fire which in his cheek so glowed,

O that forced thunder from his heart did fly,

O that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed,

O all that borrowed motion seeming owed

Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed,

And new pervert a reconciled maid.’

ALTERNATIVE VERSIONS OF SONNETS 2, 106, 138, AND 144

Each of the four sonnets printed below exists in an alternative version. To the left, we give the text as it appeared in the volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets printed in 1609. ‘Spes Altera’ and ‘On his Mistress’ Beauty’ derive from seventeenth-century manuscripts. The alternative versions of Sonnets 138 and 144 are from The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).

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.

106

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.

138

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.

Spes Altera

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And trench deep furrows in that lovely field,

Thy youth’s fair liv‘ry, so accounted now,

Shall be like rotten weeds of no worth held.

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the lustre of thy youthful days,

To say ‘Within these hollow sunken eyes’

Were an all-eaten truth and worthless praise.

O how much better were thy beauty’s use

If thou couldst say ‘This pretty child of mine

Saves my account and makes my old excuse’,

Making his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new born when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

On his Mistress’ Beauty

When in the annals of all-wasting 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 face, of hand, of lip, of eye, or brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

E’en such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises were but prophecies

Of these our days, all you prefiguring,

And for they saw 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 no tongues to praise.

138

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

Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although I know my years be past the best,

I, smiling, credit her false-speaking tongue,

Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.

But wherefore says my love that she is young,

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit’s in a soothing tongue,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me,

Since that our faults in love thus smothered be.

144

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.

144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

That like two spirits do suggest me still.

My better angel is a man right fair,

My 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 fair pride;

And whether that my angel be turned fiend,

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

For being both to me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.