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1 |
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From fairest creatures we desire increase, |
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That thereby beauty's rose might never die, |
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But as the riper should by time decease, |
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His tender heir might bear his memory; |
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But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, |
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Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, |
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Making a famine where abundance lies, |
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Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. |
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Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament |
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And only herald to the gaudy spring |
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Within thine own bud buriest thy content, |
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And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding. |
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Pity the world, or else this glutton be:lutton be: |
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To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
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2 |
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When forty winters shall besiege thy brow |
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And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, |
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Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, |
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Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held. |
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Then being asked where all thy beauty lies, |
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Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, |
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To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes |
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Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. |
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How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use |
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If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine |
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Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse', |
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Proving his beauty by succession thine. |
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This were to be new made when thou art old, |
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And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
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3 |
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Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest |
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Now is the time that face should form another, |
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Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest |
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Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. |
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For where is she so fair whose uneared womb |
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Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? |
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Or who is he so fond will be the tomb |
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Of his self-love to stop posterity? |
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Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee |
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Calls back the lovely April of her prime; |
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So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, |
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Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. |
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But if thou live remembered not to be, |
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Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
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| 4 |
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Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend |
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Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy? |
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Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, |
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And being frank, she lends to those are free. |
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Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse |
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The bounteous largess given thee to give? |
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Profitless usurer, why dost thou use |
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So great a sum of sums yet canst not live? |
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For having traffic with thyself alone, |
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Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive. |
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Then how when nature calls thee to be gone: |
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What acceptable audit canst thou leave? |
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Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee, |
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Which usèd, lives th'executor to be.
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5 |
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Those hours that with gentle work did frame |
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The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell |
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Will play the tyrants to the very same, |
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And that unfair which fairly doth excel; |
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For never-resting time leads summer on |
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To hideous winter, and confounds him there, |
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Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, |
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Beauty o-er-snowed, and bareness everywhere. |
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Then were not summer's distillation left |
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A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, |
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Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, |
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Nor it nor no remembrance what it was. |
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But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, |
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Lose but their show; their substance still lives
sweet.
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6 |
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Then let not winter's ragged hand deface |
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In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled. |
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Make sweet some vial, treasure thou some place |
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With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed. |
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That use is not forbidden usury |
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Which happies those that pay the willing loan : |
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That's for thyself to breed another thee, |
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Or ten times happier, be it ten for one ; |
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Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, |
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If ten of thine ten time refigured thee. |
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Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart, |
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Leaving thee living in posterity ? |
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Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair |
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To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
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7 |
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Lo, in the orient when the gracious light |
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Lifts up his burning head, each under eye |
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Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, |
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Serving with looks his sacred majesty, |
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And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill, |
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Resembling strong youth in his middle age, |
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Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, |
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Attending on his golden pilgrimage. |
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But when from highmost pitch, with weary car, |
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Like feeble age he reeleth from the day, |
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The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are |
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From his low tract, and look another way. |
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So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon, |
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Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
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8 |
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Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? |
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Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. |
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Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly, |
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Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy? |
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If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds |
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By unions married do offend thine ear, |
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They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds |
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In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. |
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Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, |
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Strikes each in each by mutual ordering, |
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Resembling sire and child and happy mother, |
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Who all in one one pleasing note do sing; |
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Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one, |
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Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
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9 |
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Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye |
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That thou consum'st thyself in single life ? |
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Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, |
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The world will wail thee like a makeless wife. |
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The world will be thy widow, and still weep |
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That thou no form of thee hast left behind, |
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When every private widow well may keep |
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By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind. |
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Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend |
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Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it ; |
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But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, |
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And kept unused, the user so destroys it. |
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No love toward others in that bosom sits |
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That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.
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10 |
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For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any, |
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Who for thyself art so unprovident. |
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Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, |
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But that thou none lov'st is most evident ; |
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For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate |
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That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire, |
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Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate |
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Which to repair should be thy chief desire. |
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O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind ! |
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Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love ? |
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Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind, |
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Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove. |
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Make thee another self for love of me, |
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
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William Shakespeare | Classic Poems |
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Ariel's Songs |
