THE UNFADING PICTURE

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.

OF SHAKESPEARE

75

THAT TIME SHOULD SPARE

HIS FRIEND

DEVOURING Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet

brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:

O, carve not with thy hours my Love's fair brow Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My Love shall in my verse ever live young.

FOR PRAISE NOT COMPLIMENT

So is it not with me as with that Muse

Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

Making a couplement of proud compare

With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.

O, let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my Love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:

Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

LOVE EQUALIZES HEARTS

MY glass shall not persuade me I am old,

So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold Then look I death my days should expiate.

For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me :
How can I then be elder than thou art?

O, therefore, Love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain ; Thou gav'st me thine, not to give back again.

As

LOVE'S SPEECH AND SILENCE

S an unperfect actor on the stage

Who with his fear is put besides his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart,

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.

O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more
express'd.

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ :
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.