Internet Shakespeare Editions

About this text

  • 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.

    And that vnfaire which fairely doth excell:
    65For neuer resting time leads Summer on,
    To hidious winter and confounds him there,
    Sap checkt with frost and lustie leau's quite gon.
    Beauty ore-snow'd and barenes euery where,
    Then were not summers distillation left
    70A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glasse,
    Beauties effect with beauty were bereft,
    Nor it nor noe remembrance what it was.
    But flowers distil'd though they with winter meete,
    Leese but their show, their substance still liues sweet.

    756

    THen let not winters wragged hand deface,
    In thee thy summer ere thou be distil'd:
    Make sweet some viall;treasure thou some place,
    With beautits treasure ere it be selfe kil'd:
    80That vse is not forbidden vsery,
    Which happies those that pay the willing lone;
    That's for thy selfe to breed an other thee,
    Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
    Ten times thy selfe were happier then thou art,
    85If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee,
    Then what could death doe if thou should'st depart,
    Leauing thee liuing in posterity?

    Be not selfe-wild for thou art much too faire,
    To be deaths conquest and make wormes thine heire.

    907

    LOe in the Orient when the gracious light,
    Lifts vp his burning head, each vnder eye
    Doth homage to his new appearing sight,
    Seruing with lookes his sacred maiesty,
    95And hauing climb'd the steepe vp heauenly hill,
    Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
    Yet mortall lookes adore his beauty still,
    Attending on his goulden pilgrimage:
    But when from high-most pich with wery car,
    Like
    B 2