Sonnet II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow / And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, / Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now, / Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: / Then being ask'd, where all thy beauty lies, / Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, / To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, / Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. / How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use, / If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine / Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,' / Proving his beauty by succession thine! / This were to be new made when thou art old, / And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Sonnet XVII

Who will believe my verse in time to come / If it were fill'd with your most high deserts? / Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb / Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. / If I could write the beauty of your eyes / And in fresh numbers number all your graces, / The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; / Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' / So should my papers, yellow'd with their age, / Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue, / And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage / And stretched metre of an antique song: / But were some child of yours alive that time, / You should live twice,—in it and in my rime.

Sonnet XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer's lease hath all too short a date: / Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; / And every fair from fair sometime declines, / By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd; / But thy eternal summer shall not fade, / Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, / Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, / When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; / So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet XXIII

As an unperfect actor on the stage / Who with his fear is put beside his part, / Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, / Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; / So I, for fear of trust, forget to say / The perfect ceremony of love's rite, / And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, / O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might. / O! let my books be then the eloquence / And dumb presagers of my speaking breast, / Who plead for love, and look for recompense, / More than that tongue that more hath more express'd. / O! learn to read what silent love hath writ: / To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Sonnet XXV

Let those who are in favour with their stars / Of public honour and proud titles boast, / Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, / Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most. / Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread / But as the marigold at the sun's eye, / And in themselves their pride lies buried, / For at a frown they in their glory die. / The painful warrior famoused for fight, / After a thousand victories once foil'd, / Is from the book of honour razed quite, / And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd: / Then happy I, that love and am belov'd, / Where I may not remove nor be remov'd.

Sonnet XXVII

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed / The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; / But then begins a journey in my head / To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd: / For then my thoughts—from far where I abide— / Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, / And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, / Looking on darkness which the blind do see: / Save that my soul's imaginary sight / Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, / Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, / Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. / Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, / For thee, and for myself no quiet find.