Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare (summer reading list txt) 📖

>For if you were by my unkindness shaken,

As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time;

And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime.

O! that our night of woe might have remember’d

My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’d

The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee;

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

 

CXXI

 

‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,

When not to be receives reproach of being;

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d

Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own:

I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;

By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown;

Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad and in their badness reign.

 

CXXII

 

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full character’d with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain,

Beyond all date; even to eternity:

Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist;

Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more:

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

 

CXXIII

 

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old;

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wondering at the present nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be;

I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

 

CXXIV

 

If my dear love were but the child of state,

It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,

As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

 

CXXV

 

Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honouring,

Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

Lose all and more by paying too much rent

For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,

Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?

No; let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art,

But mutual render, only me for thee.

Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul

When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control.

 

CXXVI

 

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour;

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st

Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.

If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,

As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill

May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!

She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:

Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

 

CXXVII

 

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;

But now is black beauty’s successive heir,

And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:

For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,

But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace.

Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,

Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem

At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,

Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:

Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says beauty should look so.

 

CXXVIII

 

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled, they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

 

CXXIX

 

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action: and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;

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;

Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme;

A bliss in proof,— and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

 

CXXX

 

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red, than her lips red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go,—

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,

As any she belied with false compare.

 

CXXXI

 

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,

As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;

For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart

Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.

Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold,

Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;

To say they err I dare not be so bold,

Although I swear it to myself alone.

And to be sure that is not false I swear,

A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,

One on another’s neck, do witness bear

Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place.

In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,

And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.

 

CXXXII

 

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,

Have put on black and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.

And truly not the morning sun of heaven

Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,

Nor that full star that ushers in the even,

Doth half that glory to the sober west,

As those two mourning eyes become thy face:

O! let it then as well beseem thy heart

To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,

And suit thy pity like in every part.

Then will I swear beauty herself is black,

And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

 

CXXXIII

 

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan

For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!

Is’t not enough to torture me alone,

But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?

Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,

And my next self thou harder hast engross’d:

Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken;

A torment thrice three-fold thus to be cross’d:

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,

But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail;

Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;

Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail:

And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,

Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.

 

CXXXIV

 

So, now I have confess’d that he is thine,

And I my self am mortgag’d to thy will,

Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous, and he is kind;

He learn’d but surety-like to write for me,

Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer, that putt’st forth all to use,

And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;

So him I lose through my unkind abuse.

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

 

CXXXV

 

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’

And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in over-plus;

More than enough am I that vex’d thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in ‘Will,’ add to thy ‘Will’

One will of mine, to make thy large will more.

Let no unkind ‘No’ fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one ‘Will.’

 

CXXXVI

 

If thy soul check thee that I come so near,

Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will’,

And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;

Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.

‘Will’, will fulfil the treasure of thy love,

Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.

In things of great receipt with ease we prove

Among a number one is reckon’d none:

Then in the number let me pass untold,

Though in thy store’s account I one must be;

For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold

That nothing me, a something sweet to thee:

Make but my name thy love, and love that still,

And then thou lov’st me for my name is ‘Will.’

 

CXXXVII

 

Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,

That they behold, and see not what they see?

They know what beauty is, see where it lies,

Yet what