The Sonnets (Modern)
Not Peer Reviewed
45
4
¶Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
¶Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
¶Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
¶And, being frank, she lends to those are free.
50Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
¶The bounteous largesse given thee to give?
¶Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
¶So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
¶For having traffic with thyself alone,
55Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive;
¶Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
¶What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
¶_Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
¶_Which used, lives th'executor to be.
60
5
¶Those hours that with gentle work did frame
¶The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
¶Will play the tyrants to the very same,
¶And that unfair which fairly doth excel.
65For never-resting time leads summer on
¶To hideous winter, and confounds him there,
¶Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
¶Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness everywhere;
¶Then were not summer's distillation left
70A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
¶Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
¶Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.
¶_But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
¶_Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
75
6
¶Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
¶In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
¶Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
¶With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
80That use is not forbidden usury
¶Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
¶That's for thyself to breed another thee,
¶Or ten times happier be it ten for one;
¶Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
85If ten of thine ten times refigured thee;
¶Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
¶Leaving thee living in posterity?
¶_Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
¶_To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.