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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)

    SHAKE-SPEARES

    100Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
    The eyes(fore dutious)now conuerted are
    From his low tract and looke an other way:
    So thou, thy selfe out-going in thy noon:
    Vnlok'd on diest vnlesse thou get a sonne.

    1058

    MVsick to heare, why hear'st thou musick sadly,
    Sweets with sweets warre not , ioy delights in ioy:
    Why lou'st thou that which thou receaust not gladly,
    Or else receau'st with pleasure thine annoy ?
    110If the true concord of well tuned sounds,
    By vnions married do offend thine eare,
    They do but sweetly chide thee , who confounds
    In singlenesse the parts that thou should'st beare:

    Marke how one string sweet husband to an other,
    115Strikes each in each by mutuall ordering;
    Resembling sier, and child, and happy mother,
    Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
    Whose speechlesse song being many, seeming one,
    Sings this to thee thou single wilt proue none.

    1209.

    IS it for feare to wet a widdowes eye,
    That thou consum'st thy selfe in single life?
    Ah;if thou issulesse shalt hap to die,
    The world will waile thee like a makelesse wife,
    125The world wilbe thy widdow and still weepe,
    That thou no forme of thee hast left behind ,
    When euery priuat widdow well may keepe,
    By childrens eyes, her husbands shape in minde:
    Looke what an vnthrift in the world doth spend
    130Shifts but his place, for still the world inioyes it
    But beauties waste hath in the world an end,
    And kept vnvsde the vser so destroyes it:
    No loue toward others in that bosome sits
    That on himselfe such murdrous shame commits.
    I0.
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