soul is not made a fool of, but makes itself a slave to the body, as we say, such a man is the slave of his passions; I have, therefore, ventured to make another emendation, and respectfully lay it before the critical public : Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, SONNET S. PART FIRST. I. FROM fairest creatures we desire increase, 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. 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,2 will be the tomb Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee 1 'Un-ear'd:' unploughed.-2 Fond:' foolish. IV. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? 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, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was. But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, Lese1 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, From his low tract, and look another way: So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon, 'Happies' makes happy. |