SONNETS

I.

From fairest creatures we defire 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'ft thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy fweet felf too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud burieft thy content

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

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

II.

When forty winters shall befiege thy brow And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held : Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lufty days, To fay, within thine own deep-funken eyes, Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, If thou couldst answer This fair child of mine Shall fum my count and make my old excuse,' Proving his beauty by fucceffion thine!

This were to be new made when thou art old,
And fee thy blood warm when thou feel'ft it cold.

III.

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not reneweft,
Thou doft beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is fhe fo fair whose unear'd womb
Difdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he fo fond will be the tomb
Of his felf-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live, rememb'red not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.