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

Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart; My body is the frame wherein ’tis held, And perspective it is the painter’s art. For through

TELL me where is Fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply. It is engender’d in the eyes, With gazing fed; and Fancy dies In the

O NEVER say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify! As easy might I from myself depart, As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled. Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed. That use is not

Like as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge, As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge, Even so, being tuff of

Those lips that Love’s own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’ To me that languish’d for her sake; But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart

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 silvered o’er with white;

How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st, Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those

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

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste; The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear, And of this book this learning mayst thou taste. The

If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d’ As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d.

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 times’

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

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-

But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time, And fortify your self in your decay With means more blessèd than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, That thou consum’st thy self in single life? Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife.

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

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

That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay

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

WHO is Silvia? What is she? That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be. Is she kind as

Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;

If thy soul cheque thee that I come so near, Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will,’ And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there; Thus far for love my love-suit,

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind, And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function, and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out; For it

What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since everyone hath, every one, one shade, And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and

Those lines that I before have writ do lie, Even those that said I could not love you dearer: Yet then my judgment knew no reason why My most full flame should afterwards burn

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 deceased lover, Compare them with

O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

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.

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before the bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; Before

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, And each doth good turns now unto the other, When that mine eye is famished for a look, Or heart in love with sighs himself

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd

The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells

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

That thou art 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

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I loved her dearly; That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, A loss in love that

As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. For whether

‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d, When not to be receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost which is so deem’d Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing: For

For shame, deny that thou bear’st love to any Who for thy self art so unprovident. Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, But that thou none lov’st is most evident; For

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty; Who doth the world

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy’d no sooner

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 guilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire! I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her

What’s in the brain that ink may character Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? What’s new to speak, what new to register, That may express my love or thy dear merit?

Against that time, if ever that time come, When I shall see thee frown on my defects, When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, Call’d to that audit by advised respects; Against