Internet Shakespeare Editions

Author: William Shakespeare
Editors: Hardy M. Cook, Ian Lancashire
Peer Reviewed

Shake-speares Sonnets (Quarto 1, 1609)

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,
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.