SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

THAT ETERNITY PROMISED BY OUR EVER-LIVING POET,

WISHETH

THE WELL-WISHING ADVENTURER

IN SETTING FORTH,

T. T.*

T. T.-That is, Thomas Thorpe, the original publisher.

IN reading the Sonnets, the Author of the Remarks found it convenient to make notes of reference from Sonnet to Sonnet where he saw either parallel or contrasted passages, tending to illustrate their general sense; and these references are here added, as some gratification, he hopes, to the curious and studious.

[The Sonnets are taken from the edition of Shakespeare's Works edited by Mrs. Mary Cowden Clarke.]

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

I.

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Vide REMARKS, pp. 18, 20: also Sonnet 78.