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Sonnet 1 |
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'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, makest waste in niggarding. |
Pity the world, or else this glutton be, |
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. |
Sonnet 2 |
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. |
Sonnet 3 |
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 be, |
Die single, and thine image dies with thee. |
Sonnet 4 |
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend |
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy? |
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 bounteous 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 th' executor to be. |
Sonnet 5 |
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame |
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, |
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; |
Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, |
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where: |
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, |
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. |
Sonnet 6 |
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface |
In thee thy summer ere thou be distill'd: |
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place |
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-kill'd. |
That use is not forbidden usury, |
Which happies 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 shouldst 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. |
Sonnet 7 |
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light |
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye |
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, |