The Sonnets (Modern)
Not Peer Reviewed
900
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?
905Is 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 tenor of thy jealousy?
¶Oh, no, thy love, though much, is not so great;
910It 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.
915
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.
920Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
¶No shape so true, no truth of such account,
¶And for myself mine own worth do define,
¶As I all other in all worths surmount.
¶But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
925Beated and chapped with tanned antiquity,
¶Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
¶Self, so self-loving, were iniquity.
¶_'Tis thee--my self--that for myself I praise,
¶_Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
930
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
935Hath 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
940Against 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.