Сонеты

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers
                              that thee array;
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?

Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

147. «My love is as a fever, longing still…»

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse
                              as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly express’d;

For I have sworn thee fair
                              and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

148. «Oh me, what eyes hath Love put in my head…»

Oh me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence
                    with true sight;
Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?

If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s ‘No.’

How can it? O, how can Love’s eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears
                              thou keep’st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults
                              should find.