Сонеты

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth,
                              nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’er-sways 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 wreckful 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.

70. «That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect…»

That thou art 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 woo’d of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast pass’d by the ambush
                    of young days,
Either not assail’d or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy evermore enlarged:

If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show,
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts
                    shouldst owe.

73. «That time of year thou mayst in me behold…»

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 ruin’d 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 see’st 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 nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest,
which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou
                    must leave ere long.

74. «But be contented: when that fell arrest…»