Сонеты

That god forbid that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control
                    your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!

O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison’d absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance,
                    bide each cheque,
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.

60. «Like as the waves make …»

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 crown’d,
Crooked elipses ‘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.

64. «When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced…»

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 watery 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…»