Shake-speares Sonnets (Quarto 1, 1609)
Peer Reviewed
SHAKE-SPEARES
¶Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe
¶Which hides your life , and shewes not halfe your parts:
245If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
¶And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
¶The age to come would say this Poet lies,
¶Such heauenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.
¶So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
¶And your true rights be termd a Poets rage,
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I8.
¶SHall I compare thee to a Summers day?
¶Thou art more louely and more temperate:
¶Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,
260Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines,
¶And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
¶And euery faire from faire some-time declines,
¶But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,
¶When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st,
¶So long liues this,_and this giues life to thee,
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I9
¶DEuouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes,
¶And make the earth deuoure her owne sweet brood,
¶Plucke the keene teeth from the fierce Tygers yawes,
¶And burne the long liu'd Phænix in her blood,
¶And do what ere thou wilt swift-footed time
¶To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
¶But I forbid thee one most hainous crime,
O
