Sonnets
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Shakespeare, William
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 97839
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Unknown. (Ask Eric.)
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: sonnets.Z
subject: love
subject: beauty
subject: time
subject: will
subject: tatter
subject: weed
subject: eating
subject: shame
subject: thriftless
subject: praise
subject: shakespeare
subject: william
subject: sonnets
subject: english
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: shakespeare-sonnets-59.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: shakespeare-sonnets-59.htm
sort title: Sonnets
full text: SONNETS TO THE ONLY BEGETTER OF THESE INSUING SONNETS MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESS AND THAT ETERNITY PROMISED BY OUR EVER-LIVING POET WISHETH THE WELL-WISHING ADVENTURER IN SETTING FORTH T. T. 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'st 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, makest 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 beseige 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 lusty days, 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 couldst 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 Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-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 shall see Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live, remember'd not to…