O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful 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.

66

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry:

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimmed 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 miscalled 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.

67

Ah, wherefore with infection should he live

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve

And lace itself with his society?

Why should false painting imitate his cheek,

And steal dead seeming of his living hue?

Why should poor beauty indirectly seek

Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?

Why should he live now nature bankrupt is,

Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,

For she hath no exchequer now but his,

And proud of many, lives upon his gains?

O, him she stores to show what wealth she had

In days long since, before these last so bad.

68

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,

When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,

Before these bastard signs of fair were borne

Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

Before the golden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away

To live a second life on second head;

Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay.

In him those holy antique hours are seen

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of another’s green,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;

And him as for a map doth nature store,

To show false art what beauty was of yore.

69

Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view

Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend.

All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,

Utt’ring bare truth even so as foes commend.

Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,

But those same tongues that give thee so thine own

In other accents do this praise confound

By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.

They look into the beauty of thy mind,

And that in guess they measure by thy deeds.

Then, churls, their thoughts—although their eyes were

kind—

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds.

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,

The soil is this: that thou dost common grow.

70

That thou are blamed shall not be thy defect,

For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair.

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;

For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days

Either not assailed, or victor being charged;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise

To tie up envy, evermore enlarged.

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,

Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

71

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.

72

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—

Unless you would devise some virtuous lie

To do more for me than mine own desert,

And hang more praise upon deceased I