Shakespeare's Finest Work
May 20, 2020 |
| Shakespeare's Sonnets |
William Shakespeare
(1564–1616). Sonnets
Vol. 40, pp. 270-276 of
The Harvard Classics
The most
concentrated beauty of Shakespeare's unbounded creative genius
is found in his sonnets. Written as personal messages to friends and
not intended for publication, they reveal the inner Shakespeare more
truly than do any of his great plays.
(Sonnets entered in
the London Stationers' Register, May 20, 1609.)
A Sea
Dirge
FULL fathom five thy
father lies:
Of his bones are
coral made;
Those are pearls that
were his eyes:
Nothing of him that
doth fade,
But doth suffer a
sea-change
Into something rich and
strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring
his knell:
Hark! now I hear
them,—
Ding, dong, bell.
Eighteenth
Sonnet
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 wanderest 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.
Twenty-ninth Sonnet
WHEN in disgrace with
fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate;
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d, such
wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state
with kings.
Thirtieth Sonnet
WHEN to the sessions of
sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless
night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since cancell’d
woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before:
But if the while I think on thee, dear
friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows
end.
Thirty-first Sonnet
THY bosom is endearèd
with all hearts
Which I, by lacking, have supposèd dead:
And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving
parts,
And all those friends which I thought burièd.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead!—which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie.
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all
of me.
Thirty-second Sonnet
IF thou survive my
well-contented day
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall
cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceaséd lover;
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought—
‘Had my friend’s muse grown with this growing
age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better
prove,
Theirs for their style I’ll read,
his for his love’.
Thirty-third Sonnet
FULL many a glorious
morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region-cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit
disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when
heaven’s sun staineth.
Fifty-fourth Sonnet
O HOW much more doth
beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The Canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumèd tincture of the Roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their maskèd buds
discloses;
But—for their virtue only is their show—
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
And so of you, beauteous and lovely
youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils
your truth.
Fifty-fifth Sonnet
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.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall
burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find
room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself
arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’
eyes.
Fifty-seventh Sonnet
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:
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu:
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your
will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no
ill.
Sixtieth Sonnet
LIKE as the waves make
towards the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And Time, that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet, to times in hope, my verse
shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel
hand.
Sixty-fourth Sonnet
WHEN I have seen by
Time’s fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal, slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—
That Time will come and take my Love away:
This thought is as a death, which
cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears
to lose.
Sixty-fifth Sonnet
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?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack!
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie
hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle have
might,
That in black ink my love may still
shine bright.
Sixty-sixth Sonnet
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 misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive Good attending captain Ill:
Tired with all these, from these would
I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my Love
alone.
Seventy-first Sonnet
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;
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into
your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Seventy-third Sonnet
THAT time of year thou
may’st 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:
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest:
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was norish’d by:
This thou perceiv’st, which makes
thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must
leave ere long.
Eighty-seventh Sonnet
FAREWELL! thou art too
dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not
knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth
flatter;
In sleep, a king; but waking, no such
matter.
Ninetieth Sonnet
THEN hate me when thou
wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah! do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this
sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune’s might;
And other strains of woe, which now
seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not
seem so.
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