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-Shakespeare Sonnets

«« Previous page · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 77 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 76 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 75 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 74 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 73 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 72 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 71 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 70 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 69 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 68 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 67 · William Shakespeare: Sonnet 66

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 77

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

77

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,

These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,

And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,

Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know,

Time’s thievish progress to eternity.

Look what thy memory cannot contain,

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find

Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,

To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.

These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,

Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 76

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

76

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

O know sweet love I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument:

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 75

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

75

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;

And for the peace of you I hold such strife

As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found.

Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon

Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,

Now counting best to be with you alone,

Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,

And by and by clean starved for a look,

Possessing or pursuing no delight

Save what is had, or must from you be took.

Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,

Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 74

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

74

But be contented when that fell arrest,

Without all bail shall carry me away,

My life hath in this line some interest,

Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.

When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,

The very part was consecrate to thee,

The earth can have but earth, which is his due,

My spirit is thine the better part of me,

So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,

The prey of worms, my body being dead,

The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,

Too base of thee to be remembered,

The worth of that, is that which it contains,

And that is this, and this with thee remains.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 73

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day,

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

 

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 72

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

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,

Than niggard truth would willingly impart:

O lest your true love may seem false in this,

That you for love speak well of me untrue,

My name be buried where my body is,

And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,

And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 71

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

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.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 70

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

70

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 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.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 69

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

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,

Uttering 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.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 68

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

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 born,

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, it self 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.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 67

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

67

Ah wherefore with infection should he live,

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve,

And lace it self 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.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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William Shakespeare: Sonnet 66

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

THE SONNETS

 

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.

 

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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