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  • Title: The Sonnets (Modern)
  • Editor: Michael Best

    • Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Michael Best
    Not Peer Reviewed

    The Sonnets (Modern)

    117079
    Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid
    My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;
    But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
    And my sick Muse doth give another place.
    1175I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
    Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
    Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
    He robs thee of, and pays it thee again;
    He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
    1180From thy behavior; beauty doth he give,
    And found it in thy cheek; he can afford
    No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.
    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
    Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.
    118580
    Oh, how I faint when I of you do write,
    Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
    And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
    To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
    1190But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
    The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
    My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
    On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
    Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
    1195Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
    Or, being wrecked, I am a worthless boat,
    He of tall building, and of goodly pride.
    Then if he thrive, and I be cast away,
    The worst was this: my love was my decay.
    120081
    Or I shall live, your epitaph to make,
    Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
    From hence your memory death cannot take,
    Although in me each part will be forgotten.
    1205Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
    Though I, once gone, to all the world must die;
    The earth can yield me but a common grave,
    When you entombèd in men's eyes shall lie.
    Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
    1210Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
    And tongues-to-be your being shall rehearse,
    When all the breathers of this world are dead.
    You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
    Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
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