Against my love shall be as I am now, With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn; When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn...
Is it thy will, thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?...
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;...
Ah! wherefore with infection should he live, And with his presence grace impiety, That sin by him advantage should achieve, And lace itself with his society? Why should false painting imitate his cheek,...
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow;...
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,...
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang....
No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:...
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, My verse alone had all thy gentle grace; But now my gracious numbers are decay'd, And my sick Muse doth give an other place. I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument...
So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing...
Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?...
I grant thou wert not married to my Muse, And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook The dedicated words which writers use Of their fair subject, blessing every book....
I never saw that you did painting need, And therefore to your fair no painting set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed That barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report,...
Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten....
Who is it that says most, which can say more, Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you? In whose confine immured is the store Which should example where your equal grew....
O! how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!...
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?...
My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise richly compil'd, Reserve their character with golden quill, And precious phrase by all the Muses fil'd....
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty;...
So shall I live, supposing thou art true, Like a deceived husband; so love's face May still seem love to me, though alter'd new; Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:...