Shakespeare's Sonnets eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 68 pages of information about Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Shakespeare's Sonnets eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 68 pages of information about Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d,
To-morrow sharpened in his former might: 
So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness. 
Let this sad interim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that when they see
Return of love, more blest may be the view;
  Or call it winter, which being full of care,
  Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.

LVII

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 dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those. 
  So true a fool is love, that in your will,
  Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

LVIII

That god forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! 
O! let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison’d absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury. 
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilage your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. 
  I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
  Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

LIX

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,
Which labouring for invention bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child! 
O! that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done! 
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Wh’r we are mended, or wh’r better they,
Or whether revolution be the same. 
  O! sure I am the wits of former days,
  To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

LX

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Project Gutenberg
Shakespeare's Sonnets from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.