The Sonnets and Other Poems (25 page)
Read The Sonnets and Other Poems Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
Your love and pity doth
th’impression
1
fill
Which
vulgar
2
scandal stamped upon my brow,
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So
4
you
o’er-green
my bad, my good
allow
?
You are my all the world and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue.
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong
7
.
In
so profound abysm
9
I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my
adder’s sense
10
To critic and to flatterer stoppèd are.
Mark
how with my neglect I do dispense
12
:
You
are so strongly in my purpose bred
13
That all the world besides me thinks you’re dead.
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
And
that which governs me to go about
2
Doth
part
3
his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing
4
, but
effectually is out
,
For it no form delivers to the
heart
5
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth
latch
6
.
Of
his quick objects
7
hath the mind no part,
Nor
8
his own vision holds what it doth catch,
For if it see the
rud’st or gentlest
9
sight,
The most sweet
favour
10
or deformed’st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it
shapes
12
them to your feature.
Incapable of
13
more, replete with you,
My most
true
14
mind thus makes mine eye
untrue
.
Or whether
1
doth my mind, being
crowned with you
,
Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this
alchemy
4
,
To make of monsters and things
indigest
5
Such
cherubins
6
as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad
7
a perfect best,
As fast as objects to his
beams
8
assemble?
O, ’tis the first, ’tis flatt’ry in my seeing,
And my great mind
most kingly
10
drinks it up:
Mine eye well knows
what with his gust is ’greeing
11
,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup.
If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin
That mine eye loves it and
doth first begin
14
.
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most
full
4
flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But
reckoning time
5
,
whose
millioned accidents
Creep in
’twixt vows
6
and change decrees of kings,
Tan
7
sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to th’course of
alt’ring
8
things —
Alas why, fearing of Time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say
10
, ‘Now I love you best’,
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning
12
the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe
13
:
then might I not say so
,
To
give full grow
14
th to that which still doth grow?
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit
2
impediments
. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or
bends with the remove
4
r to remove.
O no, it is an
ever-fixèd mark
5
That looks on tempests and is never shaken,
It is the
star
7
to every wand’ring
bark
,
Whose
worth’s unknown
8
, although his
height be taken
.
Love’s not
Time’s fool
9
, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his
bending
10
sickle’s
compass
come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of
doom
12
.
If this be error and
upon me proved
13
,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Accuse
1
me thus: that I have
scanted
all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to
call
3
,
Whereto all
bonds
4
do tie me day by day,
That I have
frequent
5
been with
unknown minds
And
given to time your own dear-purchased right
6
,
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book
9
both my wilfulness and errors down,
And
on just proof
10
surmise,
accumulate
,
Bring me within the
level
11
of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your
wakened hate
12
,
Since my
appeal
13
says I did strive to prove
The constancy and
virtue
14
of your love.
Like as
1
to make our appetites more keen
With
eager compounds
2
we
our palate urge
,
As to prevent our
maladies unseen
3
We
sicken
4
to
shun
sickness when we
purge
,
Even so
5
, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I
frame my feeding
6
And, sick of
welfare
7
, found a kind of
meetness
To be diseased
ere that there was true needing
8
.
Thus
policy in love, t’anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured
9
And brought
to medicine
11
a healthful state
Which,
rank of
12
goodness, would by ill be cured.
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
What potions have I drunk of
siren
1
tears,
Distilled from
limbecks
2
foul
as hell within,
Applying
3
fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I
saw myself to
4
win?
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself
so blessèd never
6
?
How have mine eyes out of their
spheres
7
been
fitted
In the distraction of this
madding
8
fever?
O benefit of ill, now I find true
That better is by evil still made better,
And ruined love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebuked to my
content
13
And gain by ills
thrice
14
more than I have spent.
That you were once unkind
befriends me
1
now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I
3
under my transgression bow
,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, you’ve passed a
hell of
6
time,
And I, a tyrant, have
no leisure taken
7
To
weigh
8
how once I suffered in your crime.
O, that our night of woe might have
remembered
9
My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me then,
tendered
11
The
humble salve
12
which wounded bosoms
fits
.
But
that your trespass
13
now becomes a fee:
Mine
ransoms
14
yours and yours must ransom me.
’Tis better to be vile than
vile esteemed
1
,
When not to be receives reproach of
being
2
,
And the
just
3
pleasure lost which is
so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’
false
5
adulterate
eyes
Give salutation to
6
my
sportive blood
?
Or
on my frailties why are frailer spies
7
,
Which in their
wills
8
count bad what I think good?
No, I am
that
9
I am and they that
level
At my
abuses
10
reckon
up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be
bevel
11
.
By
12
their
rank
thoughts my deeds must not be
shown
,
Unless this general evil they
maintain
13
:
All men are bad and
in their badness reign
14
.
Thy gift, thy
tables
1
, are within my brain
Full charactered
2
with lasting memory,
Which shall above that
idle rank
3
remain
Beyond all
date
4
, even to eternity,
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have
faculty
6
by nature to subsist,
Till each to
razed
7
oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention
9
could not so much hold,
Nor need I
tallies
10
thy dear love to score.
Therefore
to give them from me was I bold
11
,
To trust
those tables that receive thee more
12
.
To keep an
adjunct
13
to remember thee
Were to
import
14
forgetfulness in me.
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.
Thy
pyramids
2
built up with
newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange:
They are but
dressings of a former sight
4
.
Our
dates
5
are brief and therefore we admire
What thou dost
foist
6
upon us that is old,
And rather make them
born to our desire
7
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy
registers
9
and thee I both defy,
Not
wond’ring
10
at the present nor the past,
For
thy records and what we see doth lie
11
,
Made more or less by thy continual haste
12
.
This I do vow and this shall ever be:
I will be
true
14
, despite thy scythe and thee.
If
my dear love
1
were but the
child of state
,
It might
for
2
Fortune’s bastard be
unfathered
,
As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered
4
.
No, it was builded far from
accident
5
,
It
suffers not in smiling pomp
6
, nor falls
Under the blow of thrallèd discontent
7
,
Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls
8
.
It fears not
policy
9
, that
heretic
,
Which
works on leases of short-numbered hours
10
,
But all alone stands hugely
politic
11
,
That it
nor
12
grows with heat nor drowns with showers.
To this I
witness
13
call the
fools
of time
,
Which die
for goodness
14
, who have lived for crime.
Were’t aught to me
1
I bore the
canopy
,
With my extern the outward honouring
2
,
Or laid great
bases
3
for eternity
,
Which
4
proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen
dwellers on form and favour
5
Lose all and more, by paying
too much rent
6
,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour
7
,
Pitiful thrivers
8
,
in their gazing spent
?
No, let me be
obsequious
9
in thy heart,
And take thou my
oblation
10
, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with
seconds
11
, knows no
art
,
But mutual
render
12
, only me for thee.
Hence, thou
suborned informer
13
, a true soul
When most
impeached
14
stands least in thy control.