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The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

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CXXI.

‘TIS better to be vile than vile esteem’d,

When not to be receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost which is so deem’d

Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing:

For why should others false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own:

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;

Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

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The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

1 - 20 | 21 - 40 | 41 - 60 | 61 - 80 | 81 - 100 | 101 - 120 | 121 - 140 | 140 - 154

CI.

O TRUANT Muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends;

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.

Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say

‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix’d;

Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;

But best is best, if never intermix’d?’

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so; for’t lies in thee

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,

And to be praised of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how

To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

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CII.

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The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

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LXI.

IS it thy will thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry,

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake;

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake:

For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

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The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

1 - 20 | 21 - 40 | 41 - 60 | 61 - 80 | 81 - 100 | 101 - 120 | 121 - 140 | 140 - 154

LXXXI.

OR I shall live your epitaph to make,

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:

The earth can yield me but a common grave,

When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live–such virtue hath my pen–

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

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LXXXII. (Read the article)

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The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

1 - 20 | 21 - 40 | 41 - 60 | 61 - 80 | 81 - 100 | 101 - 120 | 121 - 140 | 140 - 154

XLI.

THOSE petty wrongs that liberty commits,

When I am sometime absent from thy heart,

Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,

For still temptation follows where thou art.

Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,

Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;

And when a woman woos, what woman’s son

Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?

Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,

And chide try beauty and thy straying youth,

Who lead thee in their riot even there

Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,

Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,

Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.

XLII.

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The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

1 - 20 | 21 - 40 | 41 - 60 | 61 - 80 | 81 - 100 | 101 - 120 | 121 - 140 | 140 - 154

The Sonnets of William Shakespeare

1 - 20 | 21 - 40 | 41 - 60 | 61 - 80 | 81 - 100 | 101 - 120 | 121 - 140 | 140 - 154

I.

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’st flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

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