The Sonnets (Modern)
Not Peer Reviewed
¶
106
¶When in the chronicle of wasted time
¶I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
¶And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
1580In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
¶Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
¶Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
¶I see their antique pen would have expressed
¶Even such a beauty as you master now.
1585So all their praises are but prophecies
¶Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
¶And for they looked but with divining eyes
¶They had not skill enough your worth to sing.
¶_For we which now behold these present days
1590_Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
¶
107
¶Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
¶Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
¶Can yet the lease of my true love control,
1595Supposed as forfeit to a confinèd doom.
¶The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
¶And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
¶Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
¶And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
1600Now with the drops of this most balmy time
¶My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
¶Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
¶While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;
¶_And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
1605_When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
¶
108
¶What's in the brain that ink may character
¶Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
¶What's new to speak, what now to register,
1610That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
¶Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
¶I must each day say o'er the very same,
¶Counting no old thing old; thou mine, I thine,
¶Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
1615So that eternal love, in love's fresh case,
¶Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
¶Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place
¶But makes antiquity for aye his page,
¶_Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
1620_Where time and outward form would show it dead.