WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

[Shakespeare's sonnets were not arranged or published by himself. In the only collection we have of them, those here given are numbered 29, 30, 73, 74, 106, 116. It is not known to what friend or friends they were addressed.]

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art and that man's

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 time's waste:1

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,

And moan the expense2 of many a vanished sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell3 o'er

ΙΟ

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must ex

pire, 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.

But be contented: when that fell? arrest Without all bail shall carry me away, My life hath in this line some interest,8 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;

ΙΟ

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,12
And beauty making beautiful old rime,
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 master13 now. So all their praises are but prophecies14 Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And, for they looked but with divining eyes,

II