The Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Wisehouse Classics Edition). William Shakespeare

youth in his middle age,

      Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

      Attending on his golden pilgrimage:

      But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,

      Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,

      The eyes, ‘fore duteous, now converted are

      From his low tract, and look another way:

      So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon:

      Unlook’d, on diest unless thou get a son.

VIII

       Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

      Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:

      Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

      Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

      If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,

      By unions married, do offend thine ear,

      They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

      In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

      Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

      Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;

      Resembling sire and child and happy mother,

      Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

      Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,

      Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’

IX

       Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,

      That thou consum’st thy self in single life?

      Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

      The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

      The world will be thy widow and still weep

      That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

      When every private widow well may keep

      By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:

      Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spend

      Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

      But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,

      And kept unused the user so destroys it.

      No love toward others in that bosom sits

      That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

X

       For shame! deny that thou bear’st love to any,

      Who for thy self art so unprovident.

      Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov’d of many,

      But that thou none lov’st is most evident:

      For thou art so possess’d with murderous hate,

      That ‘gainst thy self thou stick’st not to conspire,

      Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

      Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

      O! change thy thought, that I may change my mind:

      Shall hate be fairer lodg’d than gentle love?

      Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

      Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:

      Make thee another self for love of me,

      That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

XI

       As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st,

      In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

      And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,

      Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest,

      Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;

      Without this folly, age, and cold decay:

      If all were minded so, the times should cease

      And threescore year would make the world away.

      Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

      Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:

      Look, whom she best endow’d, she gave thee more;

      Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

      She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby,

      Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

XII

       When I do count the clock that tells the time,

      And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

      When I behold the violet past prime,

      And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;

      When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

      Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

      And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,

      Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,

      Then of thy beauty do I question make,

      That thou among the wastes of time must go,

      Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

      And die as fast as they see others grow;

      And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence

      Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

XIII

       O! that you were your self; but, love you are

      No longer yours, than you your self here live:

      Against this coming end you should prepare,

      And your sweet semblance to some other give:

      So should that beauty which you hold in lease

      Find no determination; then you were

      Yourself again, after yourself’s decease,

      When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

      Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

      Which