Not Peer Reviewed
- Edition: The Sonnets
The Sonnets (Modern)
- Texts of this edition
- Facsimiles
22516
226But wherefore do not you a mightier way
227Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time,
228And fortify yourself in your decay
229With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
230Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
231And many maiden gardens, yet unset,
232With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
233Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
234So should the lines of life that life repair,
235Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,
236Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
237Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
238 To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,
239 And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.
24017
241Who will believe my verse in time to come,
242If it were filled with your most high deserts?
243Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
244Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
245If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
246And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
247The age to come would say, "This poet lies:
248Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces."
249So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
250Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
251And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
252And stretchèd meter of an antique song.
253 But were some child of yours alive that time,
254 You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.
25518
256Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
257Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
258Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
259And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
260Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
261And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
262And every fair from fair sometime declines,
263By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
264But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
265Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
266Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
267When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
268 So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
269 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.