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- Edition: The Sonnets
The Sonnets (Modern)
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90061
901Is it thy will thy image should keep open
902My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
903Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
904While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
905Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
906So far from home into my deeds to pry,
907To find out shames and idle hours in me,
908The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
909Oh, no, thy love, though much, is not so great;
910It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
911Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
912To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
913 For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
914 From me far off, with others all too near.
91562
916Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
917And all my soul, and all my every part;
918And for this sin there is no remedy,
919It is so grounded inward in my heart.
920Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
921No shape so true, no truth of such account,
922And for myself mine own worth do define,
923As I all other in all worths surmount.
924But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
925Beated and chapped with tanned antiquity,
926Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
927Self, so self-loving, were iniquity.
928 'Tis thee--my self--that for myself I praise,
929 Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
93063
931Against my love shall be as I am now,
932With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn;
933When hours have drained his blood, and filled his brow
934With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
935Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,
936And all those beauties whereof now he's king
937Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
938Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
939For such a time do I now fortify
940Against confounding age's cruel knife,
941That he shall never cut from memory
942My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
943 His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
944 And they shall live, and he in them still green.