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- Edition: The Sonnets
The Sonnets (Modern)
- Texts of this edition
- Facsimiles
907
91Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light
92Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
93Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
94Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
95And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
96Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
97Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
98Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
99But when from highmost pitch with weary car,
100Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
101The eyes, fore-duteous, now converted are
102From his low tract, and look another way:
103 So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
104 Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son.
1058
106Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
107Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy;
108Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
109Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
110If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds
111By unions married, do offend thine ear,
112They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
113In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:
114Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
115Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
116Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
117Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
118 Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
119 Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
1209
121Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
122That thou consum'st thyself in single life?
123Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
124The world will wail thee like a mateless wife;
125The world will be thy widow, and still weep
126That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
127When every private widow well may keep,
128By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
129Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend,
130Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
131But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
132And kept unused the user so destroys it:
133 No love toward others in that bosom sits
134 That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.