Сонеты

121. «‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d…»

‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deem’d
Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing:

For why should others false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad
                    what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight,
          though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds
                    must not be shown;

Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

124. «If my dear love were but the child of state…»

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,
As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers
                        with flowers gather’d.

No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat nor drowns
                                      with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness,
                    who have lived for crime.

126. «O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power…»

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown,
                    and therein show’st
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow’st;

If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards,
                    still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep,
                              her treasure:
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.

129. «The expense of spirit in a waste of shame…»

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows;
                    yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men
                              to this hell.