The Sonnets

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless unsurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee,

Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.

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Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter, and confounds him there;

Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’ersnow’d, and bareness every where.

Then, were not summer’s distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was;

But flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show: their substance still lives sweet.

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Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer ere thou be distill’d;

Make sweet some vail; treasure thou some place

With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-kill’d.

That use is not forbidden usury

Which happies those that pay the willing loan –

That’s for thyself to breed an other thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee.

Then what could Death do if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair

To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

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Lo, in the orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill;

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage;

But when from higmost pitch, with weary car,