SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date :
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest :
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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 unwoo'd, 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, my verse distills your truth.
WHEN I have seen, by Time's fell hand defaced,
The rich proud cost of out-worn bury'd age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd,
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.
THAT time of year thou may'st 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 sun-set, 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.
FROM you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Had put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd 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-story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew :
Nor did I wonder at the lilies 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 seem'd it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
THE forward violet thus did I chide :
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweetest smells,
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair :
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth,
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.
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, e'en to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, and no man ever lov'd.
ON HIS MISTRESS, THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA.
You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light!
You common people of the skies!
What are you when the sun shall rise?
You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your voices understood
By your weak accents! what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?
You violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own!
What are you when the rose is blown?
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