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- Edition: The Sonnets
The Sonnets (Modern)
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1From fairest creatures we desire increase,
2That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
3But as the riper should by time decease
4His tender heir might bear his memory:
5But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
6Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
7Making a famine where abundance lies,
8Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
9Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
10And only herald to the gaudy spring,
11Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
12And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
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16When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
17And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
18Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
19Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
20Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
21Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
22To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
23Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
24How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use
25If thou couldst answer, "This fair child of mine
26Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,"
27Proving his beauty by succession thine.
28 This were to be new made when thou art old,
29 And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
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31Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest,
32Now is the time that face should form another,
33Whose fresh repair, if now thou not renewest,
34Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
35For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
36Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
37Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
38Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
39Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
40Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
41So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
42Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
43 But if thou live remembered not to be,
44 Die single, and thine image dies with thee.