SONNET S. PART FIRST. 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,f!" 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. of t II. When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, If thou could'st answer-This fair child of mine Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse' Proving his beauty by succession thine! This were to be new-made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. III. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair, whose un-ear'd1 womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee 1 'Un-ear'd:' unploughed.-Fond:' foolish. IV. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The boundless largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thyself alone, Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive. Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit canst thou leave? Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee, Which, used, lives thy executor to be. V. Those hours, that with gentle work did frame Will play the tyrants to the very same, And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter, and confounds him there; Then, were not summer's distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was. But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, Lese 1 but their show; their substance still lives sweet. 1 Lese: lose. VI. Then let not winter's ragged hand deface Which happies1 those that pay the willing loan; That's for thyself to breed another thee, Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, If ten of thine ten times refigured thee: Then, what could death do if thou should'st depart, Leaving thee living in posterity? Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair To be Death's conquest, and make worms thine heir. VII. Lo, in the orient when the gracious light But when from high-most pitch, with weary car, So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon, VIII. Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? 1 By unions married, do offend thine ear, In singleness the parts that thou should'st bear. IX. Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye, That thou consum'st thyself in single life? The world will wail thee, like a makeless 2 wife : By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind. Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend, Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it. No love toward others in that bosom sits, That on himself such murderous shame commits. 1 Thou, whom it is music to hear, why hearest thou, &c. |