Category Poets

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any, Who for thyself art so unprovident. Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, 4But that thou none lov’st is most evident. For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire, Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate 8Which to repair should be thy chief desire. O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind. Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love? Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind, Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.  Make thee another self for love of me,  That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye That thou consum’st thyself in single life? Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, 4The world will wail thee like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow and still weep That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow well may keep, 8By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind. Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, And, kept unused, the user so destroys it.  No love toward others in that bosom sits  That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty; And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his…

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled. Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place 4With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed. That use is not forbidden usury Which happies those that pay the willing loan; That’s for thyself to breed another thee, 8Or ten times happier, be it ten for one. Ten times thyself were happier than thou art If ten of thine ten times refigured thee; Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart, 12Leaving thee living in posterity?  Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair  To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, Will play the tyrants to the very same And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter…

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy? Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to…

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so…

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—…

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory; But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame…

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 overturn, And broils root out the…