Shake-speares Sonnets (Quarto 1, 1609)
Peer Reviewed
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¶Vpon thy selfe thy beauties legacy?
¶Natures bequest giues nothing but doth lend,
¶For hauing traffike with thy selfe alone,
¶Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
¶What acceptable Audit can'st thou leaue?
¶Which vsed liues th'executor to be.
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¶The louely gaze where euery eye doth dwell
¶Will play the tirants to the very same,
¶And that vnfaire which fairely doth excell:
65For neuer resting time leads Summer on,
¶To hidious winter and confounds him there,
¶Beauty ore-snow'd and barenes euery where,
¶Beauties effect with beauty were bereft,
¶Nor it nor noe remembrance what it was.
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¶THen let not winters wragged hand deface,
¶Which happies those that pay the willing lone;
¶That's for thy selfe to breed an other thee,
¶Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
¶Ten times thy selfe were happier then thou art,
85If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee,
¶Leauing thee liuing in posterity?
¶To be deaths conquest and make wormes thine heire.
