Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (94 page)

Ninety-seventh Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

HOW like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
  
5
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;
  
10
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
 
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
 
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Ninety-eighth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

FROM you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
  
5
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the Lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the Rose;
  
10
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
 
Yet seem’d it Winter still, and you, away,
 
As with your shadow I with these did play.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Fourth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

TO me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
  
5
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
  
10
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
 
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred, —
 
Ere you were born, was beauty’s summer dead.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Sixth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best
  
5
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have exprest
Ev’n such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
  
10
And for they look’d but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
 
For we, which now behold these present days,
 
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Seventh Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

NOT mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d
  
5
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
  
10
Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:
 
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
 
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Ninth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

O, NEVER say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify:
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie;
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
  
5
Like him that travels, I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
  
10
That it could so preposterously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
 
For nothing this wide universe I call,
 
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Tenth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

ALAS, ’tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is that I have look’d on truth
  
5
Askance and strangely: but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
  
10
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confin’d.
 
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
 
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Eleventh Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

O, FOR my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
  
5
And almost thence my nature is subdu’d
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.
Pity me then and wish I were renew’d;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel ‘gainst my strong infection;
  
10
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
 
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
 
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Sixteenth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark
  
5
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
  
10
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev’n to the edge of doom:
 
If this be error, and upon me proved,
 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

TH’ EXPENSE of Spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy’d no sooner but despisèd straight;
  
5
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
  
10
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
 
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
 
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

One Hundred and Forty-sixth Sonnet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

POOR Soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Fool’d by these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
  
5
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
  
10
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
 
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
 
And, death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order