So long as men can breathe or eyes can

see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign

eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows
green,

XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's Gilding pale streams with heavenly al

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
scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost de-
spising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

10

Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's

chemy, Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 5 With ugly rack2 on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendor on 5 my brow;

IO

But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region3 cloud hath masked him from

XXX

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

XXXIII

waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 5 For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

LXIV

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; wealth brings When sometime lofty towers I see downrazed,

That then I scorn to change my state
with kings.

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 5
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,.
Increasing store with loss and loss with

And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe,

And moan the expense1 of many a vanished
sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear
friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

1 loss.

IO

me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.

O, how shall summer's honey breath hold

out

5

Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

10

Or what strong hand can hold his swift

foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

LXVI

Tired with all these, for restful death I Death's second self, that seals up all in

rest.

cry:

In me thou see'st the glowing of such
fire

As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced, 5
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, 10
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,1
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.

LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

your love even with my life decay,

1 folly.

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 see'st the twilight of such day 5
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take
away,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 10
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.

XCVIII

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied2 April dressed in all his
trim

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped

with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell

5

Of different flowers in odor and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where
they grew;

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of de-

light,

II

woe.

O, if, I say, you

look upon this verse

When I perhaps compounded am with Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still, and, you

clay,

10

Do not so much as my poor name re

hearse, But let

away,

As with your shadow, I with these did play.

2 gorgeously variegated.