The Sonnets

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,

Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

59

If there be nothing new, but that which is,

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which labouring for invention bear amis

The second burthen of a former child!

O that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done.

That I might see what the old world could say,

To this composed wonder of your frame,

Whether we are mended, or whether better they,

Or whether revolution be the same. 

O sure I am the wits of former days,

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

60

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 crowned,

Crooked eclipses '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.

61 

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry,

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?

O no, thy love though much, is not so great,

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

62

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,

And all my soul, and all my every part;

And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart. 

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,

And for my self mine own worth do define,

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me my self indeed

beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:

Self, so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

63

Against my love shall be as I am now

With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,

When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow

With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn

Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,

And all those beauties whereof now he's king

Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his spring: 

For such a time do I now fortify

Against confounding age's cruel knife,

That he shall never cut from memory

My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,

And they shall live, and he in them still green.

64

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-rased,

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 it self 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, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'ersways 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 wrackful siege of batt'ring 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.

66 

Tired with all these for restful death I cry,

As to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

And strength by limping sway disabled

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,

And simple truth miscalled simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that to die, I leave my love alone.

67

Ah wherefore with infection should he live,

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve,

And lace it self with his society? 

Why should false painting imitate his cheek,