Those petty wrongs that liberty commits,When I am sometime absent from thy heart,Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,For still temptation follows where thou art.Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;And when a woman woos, what woman’s sonWill sourly leave her till she have prevailed?Ay me! but…
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.Then if for my love thou my love receivest,I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;But yet be blamed, if…
Those hours, that with gentle work did frameThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel;For never-resting time leads summer onTo hideous winter, and confounds him there;Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where:Then were not summer’s…
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-liv’d 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…
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, of 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…
O, that you were yourself! but, love, you areNo 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 leaseFind no determination: then you wereYourself again after yourself’s decease,When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.Who lets…
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 leavesWhich erst from heat did canopy the herd,And summer’s green all girded up in sheavesBorne on the bier…
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growestIn one of thine, from that which thou departest;And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowestThou 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 ceaseAnd threescore year would…
From you have I been absent in the spring,When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trimHath put a spirit of youth in every thing,That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smellOf different flowers in odour and in hueCould make me any summer’s story tell,Or from their…
How like a winter hath my absence beenFrom thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!What old December’s bareness every where!And yet this time removed was summer’s time,The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:Yet this abundant…