William Shakespeare - The Sonnets

So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all the world, and I must strive,

To know my shames and praises from your tongue,

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others' voices, that my adder's sense,

To critic and to flatterer stopped are:

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.

You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

That all the world besides methinks are dead.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,

And that which governs me to go about,

Doth part his function, and is partly blind,

Seems seeing, but effectually is out:

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch,

Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:

For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,

The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:

The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.

Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you

Drink up the monarch's plague this flattery?

Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,

And that your love taught it this alchemy?

To make of monsters, and things indigest,

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,

Creating every bad a perfect best

As fast as objects to his beams assemble:

O 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing,

And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,

And to his palate doth prepare the cup.

If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin,

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer,

Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,

My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,

But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents

Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,

Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things:

Alas why fearing of time's tyranny,

Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'

When I was certain o'er incertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?

Love is a babe, then might I not say so

To give full growth to that which still doth grow.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come,

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,

Wherein I should your great deserts repay,

Forgot upon your dearest love to call,

Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,

That I have frequent been with unknown minds,

And given to time your own dear-purchased right,

That I have hoisted sail to all the winds

Which should transport me farthest from your sight.

Book both my wilfulness and errors down,

And on just proof surmise, accumulate,

Bring me within the level of your frown,

But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:

Since my appeal says I did strive to prove

The constancy and virtue of your love.

Like as to make our appetite more keen

With eager compounds we our palate urge,

As to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.

Even so being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,

To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love t' anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.

But thence I learn and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears

Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,

Still losing when I saw my self to win!

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,

Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted

In the distraction of this madding fever!

O benefit of ill, now I find true

That better is, by evil still made better.

And ruined love when it is built anew

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

So I return rebuked to my content,

And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

That you were once unkind befriends me now,

And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,

Needs must I under my transgression bow,

Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken

As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time,

And I a tyrant have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.

O that our night of woe might have remembered

My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you, as you to me then tendered

The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee,

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,

When not to be, receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,

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.

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full charactered with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain

Beyond all date even to eternity.

Or at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist,

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed:

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more:

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,

They are but dressings Of a former sight:

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,