When men shall find thy flower, thy glory pass,
And thou with careful brow sitting alone:
Received hast this message from thy glass,
That tells thee truth, and says that all is gone.
   Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou madest,            
Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining:
I that have lov’d thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waining.
   The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn, when all the matter’s spent:
Then what my faith hath been thy self shalt see,
And that thou wast unkind thou mayest repent.
   Thou mayst repent, that thou hast scorn’d my tears,
   When Winter snows upon thy golden hairs.

   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,¹¹ mak’st waste in niggarding.¹²
   Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
   To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

   When Winter snows upon thy golden hairs,
And frost of age hath nipped thy flowers near:
When dark shall seem thy day that never clears,
And all lies withered that was held so dear.
   Then take this picture which I here present thee,
Limned with a Pencil not all unworthy:
Here see the gifts that God and nature lent thee;
Here read thy self, and what I suffered for thee.
   This may remain thy lasting monument,
Which happily posterity may cherish:
These colors with thy fading are not spent;
These may remain, when thou and I shall perish.
   If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby;
   They will remain, and so thou canst not die.

   When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gaz’d 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 deserv’d 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.

   Thou Canst not die whilst any zeal abound
In feeling hearts, that can conceive these lines:
Though thou a Laura hast no Petrarch found,
In base attire, yet clearly Beauty shines.
   And I, though born in a colder clime,
Do feel mine inward heat as great, I know it:
He never had more faith, although more rhyme,
I love as well, though he could better show it.
   But I may add one feather to thy fame,
To help her flight throughout the fairest Isle:
And if my pen could more enlarge thy name,
Then shouldst thou live in an immortal style.
   But though that Laura better limned be,
   Suffice, thou shalt be lov’d as well as she.

   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’d¹³ 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 shalt 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.

   O be not griev’d that these my papers should,
Bewray² unto the world how fair thou art:
Or that my wits have show’d the best they could,
The chastest flame that ever warmed a heart.
   Think not sweet Delia, this shall be thy shame,
My Muse should found thy praise with mournful warble:
How many lives the glory of whose name,
Shall rest in ice, when thine is grav’d in Marble.
   Thou mayst in after ages live esteem’d,
Unburied in these lines reserv’d in pureness;
These shall entomb those eyes, that have redeem’d
Me from the vulgar, thee from all obscureness.
   Although my careful accents never mov’d thee;
   Yet count it no disgrace that I have lov’d thee.

   Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self 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 thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
   Thy unus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
   Which used lives th'executor to be.

   Delia these eyes that so admireth thine,
Have seen those walls the which ambition reared,
To check the world, how they entombed have lain
within themselves; and on them ploughs have eared³.
   Yet for all that no barbarous hand attained,
The spoil of fame deserv’d by virtuous men:
Whose glorious actions luckily had gained,
Th' eternal Annuals⁴ of a happy⁵ pen.
   Why then though Delia fade let that not move her,
Though time do spoil her of the fairest veil
That ever yet mortality did cover;
Which shall instar⁶ the needle and the trail.⁷
   That grace, that virtue, all that serv’d t’ in woman;
   Doeth her unto eternity assummon.⁸

   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 check'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,
   Leese¹⁴ but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

   Fair and lovely maid, look from the shore,
See thy Leander striving in these waves:
Poor soul fore-spent, whose force can do no more,
Now send forth hopes, for now calm pitty saves.
   And waft him to thee with those lovely eyes,
A happy convoy to a holy land:
Now show thy power, and where thy virtue lies,
To save thine own, stretch out the fairest hand.
   Stretch out the fairest hand a pledge of peace,
That hand that darts so right, and never miffs:
I'll not revenge old wrongs, my wrath shall cease;
For that which gave me wounds, I'll give it kisses.
   Once let the ocean of my cares find shore,
   That thou be pleas'd, and I may sigh no more.

   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 thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one.
   Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur'd 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.

   Read in my face, a volume of despairs,
The wailing Iliads of my tragic woe;
Drawn with my blood, and printed with my cares,
Wrought by her hand, that I have honoured so.
   Who whilst I burn, she singes at soul's wrack,
Looking aloft from turret of her pride:
There my soul's tyrant joys her, in the sack
Of her own seat, whereof I made her guide.
   There do these smokes that from affliction rise,
Serve as an incense to a cruel dame:
A sacrifice thrice grateful to her eyes,
Because their pow'r⁹ serve to exact the same.
   Thus ruins she, to satisfy her will;
   The temple, where her name was honored still.

   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;
   And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.
   But when from high-most 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 an other way;
   So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
   Unlook'd on diest unless thou get a son.

   My Cynthia hath the waters of mine eyes,
The ready handmaids on her grace attending:
That never fall to ebb, nor ever dries,
For to their flow she never grants an ending.
   Th'ocean never did attend more duly,
Upon his sovereign's course, the night's pale queen:
Nor paid the impost of his waves more truly,
Than mine to her in truth have ever been.
   Yet nought the rock of that hard heart can move,
Where beat these tears with zeal, and fury driveth:
And yet I rather languish in her love
Than I would joy the fairest she that liveth.
   I doubt to find such pleasure in my gaining,
   As now I taste in compass of complaining.  

   Music to hear, why hearst thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receivst 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 an other,
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.'

   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 makeless¹⁵ 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 murdrous shame commits.

   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 possest with murdrous hate
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st¹⁶ 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 an other self for love of me,
   That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

   As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest
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 the 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.

   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 silver'd 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 them-selves 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.

   O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
No longer yours than you yourself 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 husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
   O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know
   You had a father; let your son say so.

   Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, or dearths, or seasons' quality;
   Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
   But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
   Or else of thee this I prognosticate,—
   Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

   When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
   When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd even by selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
   Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night,
   And all in war with Time for love of you,
   As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

   But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
   Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens yet unset
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit;
   So should the lines of life that life repair
Which this time's pencil or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
   To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
   And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

   Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
   If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
   So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song;
   But were some child of yours alive that time,
   You should live twice,—in it and in my rhyme.

   Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
   Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd.
   But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.