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- Edition: The Sonnets
The Sonnets (Modern)
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454
46Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
47Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
48Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
49And, being frank, she lends to those are free.
50Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
51The bounteous largesse given thee to give?
52Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
53So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
54For having traffic with thyself alone,
55Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive;
56Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
57What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
58 Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
59 Which used, lives th'executor to be.
605
61Those hours that with gentle work did frame
62The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
63Will play the tyrants to the very same,
64And that unfair which fairly doth excel.
65For never-resting time leads summer on
66To hideous winter, and confounds him there,
67Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
68Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness everywhere;
69Then were not summer's distillation left
70A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
71Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
72Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.
73 But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
74 Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
756
76Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
77In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
78Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
79With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
80That use is not forbidden usury
81Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
82That's for thyself to breed another thee,
83Or ten times happier be it ten for one;
84Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
85If ten of thine ten times refigured thee;
86Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
87Leaving thee living in posterity?
88 Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
89 To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.