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,...
Love is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:...
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind; And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out; For it no form delivers to the heart...
Your love and pity doth the impression fill, Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?...
O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds....
Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy,...
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....
What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one, hath every one, one shade, And you but one, can every shadow lend....
Being your slave what should I do but tend, Upon the hours, and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend; Nor services to do, till you require....
That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!...
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....
O! lest the world should task you to recite What merit lived in me, that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove;...
So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground; And for the peace of you I hold such strife As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found....
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....
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!...
From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him....
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are lov'd of more and less: Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort....
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:...
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all; What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more....