To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,...
O! never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify, As easy might I from my self depart As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,...
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom....
Let not my love be call'd idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,...
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain....
In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note; But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote....
Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, When I against myself with thee partake? Do I not think on thee, when I forgot Am of my self, all tyrant, for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,...
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,...
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....
That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel....
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:...
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:...
O! call not me to justify the wrong That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue: Use power with power, and slay me not by art,...
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....
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....
If there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd, Which labouring for invention bear amiss The second burthen of a former child!...
Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd, To-morrow sharpened in his former might:...
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time....
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...
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?...