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  • Title: Shake-speares Sonnets (Quarto 1, 1609)
  • Editors: Hardy M. Cook, Ian Lancashire

    • Copyright Hardy M. Cook and Ian Lancashire. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editors: Hardy M. Cook, Ian Lancashire
    Peer Reviewed

    Shake-speares Sonnets (Quarto 1, 1609)

    SHAKE-SPEARES

    Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe
    Which hides your life , and shewes not halfe your parts:
    245If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
    And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
    The age to come would say this Poet lies,
    Such heauenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.
    So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
    250Be scorn'd, like old men of lesse truth then tongue,
    And your true rights be termd a Poets rage,
    And stretched miter of an Antique song.
    But were some childe of yours aliue that time,
    You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.

    255I8.

    SHall I compare thee to a Summers day?
    Thou art more louely and more temperate:
    Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,
    And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:
    260Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines,
    And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
    And euery faire from faire some-time declines,
    By chance, or natures changing course vntrim'd:
    But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,
    265Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow'st,
    Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade,
    When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st,
    So long as men can breath or eyes can see,
    So long liues this, and this giues life to thee,

    270I9

    DEuouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes,
    And make the earth deuoure her owne sweet brood,
    Plucke the keene teeth from the fierce Tygers yawes,
    And burne the long liu'd Phaenix in her blood,
    275Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
    And do what ere thou wilt swift-footed time
    To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
    But I forbid thee one most hainous crime,
    O
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