Shall I compare thee to a fummer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And fummer's leafe hath all too fhort a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair fometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lofe poffeffion of that fair thou oweft,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'ft;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own fweet blood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and forry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, fwift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one moft heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen ;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to fucceeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love fhall in my verse ever live young.
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Haft thou, the master-mistress of my paffion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's fouls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as fhe wrought thee, feli a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But fince the prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.
So is it not with me as with that Mufe
Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare,
With fun and moon, with earth and fea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O, let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
any mother's child, though not so bright
As thofe gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:
Let them fay more that like of hear-say well;
I will not praise that purpose not to fell.
My glass shall not perfuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days fhould expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the feemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me :
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O, therefore, love, be of thyfelf fo wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
"Prefume not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gaveft me thine, not to give back again.
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