The Sonnets

Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,

And stretched metre of an antique song.

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.

18

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 dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

19

Devouring Time blunt thou the lion's paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,

And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,

And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,

O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,

Him in thy course untainted do allow,

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. 

Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

20

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,

Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,

A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted

With shifting change as is false women's fashion,

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,

A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,

Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

21 

So is it not with me as with that muse,

Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,

Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,

And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

Making a couplement of proud compare

With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems:

With April's first-born flowers and all things rare,

That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.

O let me true in love but truly write,

And then believe me, my love is as fair,

As any mother's child, though not so bright

As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:

Let them say more that like of hearsay well,

I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

So long as youth and thou are of one date,

But when in thee time's furrows I behold,

Then look I death my days should expiate. 

For all that beauty that doth cover thee,

Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,

How can I then be elder than thou art?

O therefore love be of thyself so wary,

As I not for my self, but for thee will,

Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary

As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,

Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.

23

As an unperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put beside his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;

So I for fear of trust, forget to say,

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,

O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might: 

O let my looks be then the eloquence,

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.

O learn to read what silent love hath writ,

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

24

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart,

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,

And perspective it is best painter's art.

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies,

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; 

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,

They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

25

Let those who are in favour with their stars,

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars

Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;

Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,

But as the marigold at the sun's eye,

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famoused for fight,