The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

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 d
ouble 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,