Not Peer Reviewed
- Edition: The Sonnets
The Sonnets (Modern)
- Texts of this edition
- Facsimiles
121582
1216I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
1217And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
1218The dedicated words which writers use
1219Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
1220Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
1221Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
1222And therefore art enforced to seek anew
1223Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
1224And do so, love; yet when they have devised
1225What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend,
1226Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized
1227In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;
1228 And their gross painting might be better used
1229 Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.
123083
1231I never saw that you did painting need,
1232And therefore to your fair no painting set;
1233I found (or thought I found) you did exceed
1234The barren tender of a poet's debt;
1235And therefore have I slept in your report,
1236That you yourself, being extant, well might show
1237How far a modern quill doth come too short,
1238Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
1239This silence for my sin you did impute,
1240Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
1241For I impair not beauty, being mute,
1242When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
1243 There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
1244 Than both your poets can in praise devise.
124584
1246Who is it that says most which can say more
1247Than this rich praise: that you alone are you?
1248In whose confine immured is the store
1249Which should example where your equal grew?
1250Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
1251That to his subject lends not some small glory;
1252But he that writes of you, if he can tell
1253That you are you, so dignifies his story.
1254Let him but copy what in you is writ,
1255Not making worse what nature made so clear,
1256And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
1257Making his style admired everywhere.
1258 You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
1259 Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.