William Shakespeare
THE SONNETS
I
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beautyʼs 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,
Feedʼst thy lightʼs flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too crueclass="underline"
Thou that art now the worldʼs fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl makʼst waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the worldʼs due, by the grave and thee.
II
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beautyʼs field,
Thy youthʼs proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatterʼd 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 deservʼd thy beautyʼs 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 feelʼst it cold.
III
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 unearʼd 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 motherʼs 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, rememberʼd not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
IV
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beautyʼs legacy?
Natureʼs 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 thʼ executor to be.
V
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 oʼer-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summerʼs distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beautyʼs effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distillʼd, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
VI
Then let not winterʼs ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distillʼd:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beautyʼs treasure ere it be self-killʼd.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
Thatʼs for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigurʼd thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willʼd, for thou art much too fair
To be deathʼs conquest and make worms thine heir.
VII
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climbʼd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, ʼfore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon:
Unlookʼd, on diest unless thou get a son.
VIII
Music to hear, why hearʼst thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lovʼst thou that which thou receivʼst not gladly,
Or else receivʼst with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: ʼThou single wilt prove none.ʼ
IX
Is it for fear to wet a widowʼs eye,
That thou consumʼst thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By childrenʼs eyes, her husbandʼs shape in mind:
Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beautyʼs waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murdʼrous shame commits.