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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)

    SONNETS.

    Why should he liue, now nature banckrout is,
    1000Beggerd of blood to blush through liuely vaines,
    For she hath no exchecker now but his,
    And proud of many, liues vpon his gaines?
    O him she stores, to show what welth she had,
    In daies long since, before these last so bad.

    100568

    THus is his cheeke the map of daies out-worne,
    When beauty liu'd and dy'ed as flowers do now,
    Before these bastard signes of faire were borne,
    Or durst inhabit on a liuing brow:
    1010Before the goulden tresses of the dead,
    The right of sepulchers, were shorne away,
    To liue a scond life on second head,
    Ere beauties dead fleece made another gay:
    In him those holy antique howers are seene,
    1015Without all ornament, it selfe and true,
    Making no summer of an others greene,
    Robbing no ould to dresse his beauty new,
    And him as for a map doth Nature store,
    To shew faulse Art what beauty was of yore.

    102069

    THose parts of thee that the worlds eye doth view,
    Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:
    All toungs(the voice of soules)giue thee that end,
    Vttring bare truth, euen so as foes Commend.
    1025Their outward thus with outward praise is crownd,
    But those same toungs that giue thee so thine owne,
    In other accents doe this praise confound
    By seeing farther then the eye hath showne.
    They looke into the beauty of thy mind,
    1030And that in guesse they measure by thy deeds,
    Then churls their thoughts(although their eies were kind)
    To thy faire flower ad the rancke smell of weeds,
    But why thy odor matcheth not thy show,
    The solye is this, that thou doest common grow.
    That
    E 3
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