Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses

That flame through water which their hue encloses.

‘O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear!

But with the inundation of the eyes

What rocky heart to water will not wear?

What breast so cold that is not warmed here?

O cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath,

Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

‘For lo, his passion, but an art of craft,

Even there resolved my reason into tears.

There my white stole of chastity I daffed,

Shook off my sober guards and civil fears;

Appear to him as he to me appears,

All melting, though our drops this diff’rence bore:

His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.

‘In him a plenitude of subtle matter,

Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,

Of burning blushes or of weeping water,

Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,

In either’s aptness, as it best deceives,

To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,

Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows,

‘That not a heart which in his level came

Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,

Showing fair nature is both kind and tame,

And, veiled in them, did win whom he would maim.

Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;

When he most burned in heart-wished luxury,

He preached pure maid and praised cold chastity.

‘Thus merely with the garment of a grace

The naked and concealed fiend he covered,

That th’unexperient gave the tempter place,

Which like a cherubin above them hovered.

Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered?

Ay me, I fell, and yet do question make

What I should do again for such a sake.

‘O that infected moisture of his eye,

O that false fire which in his cheek so glowed,

O that forced thunder from his heart did fly,

O that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed,

O all that borrowed motion seeming owed

Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed,

And new pervert a reconciled maid.’

ALTERNATIVE VERSIONS OF SONNETS 2, 106, 138, AND 144

Each of the four sonnets printed below exists in an alternative version. To the left, we give the text as it appeared in the volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets printed in 1609. ‘Spes Altera’ and ‘On his Mistress’ Beauty’ derive from seventeenth-century manuscripts. The alternative versions of Sonnets 138 and 144 are from The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).

2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held.

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use

If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse’,

Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And for they looked but with divining eyes

They had not skill enough your worth to sing;

For we which now behold these present days

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

138

When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth

Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust,

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Spes Altera

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And trench deep furrows in that lovely field,

Thy youth’s fair liv‘ry, so accounted now,

Shall be like rotten weeds of no worth held.