The Sonnets

William Shakespeare

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780008171292
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'In black ink my love may still shine bright…'' In black ink my love may still shine bright… 'Universally admired and quoted, Shakespeare's Sonnets have love, beauty and the passing of time at their heart. Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry ('Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? ', 'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds'), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love. Universally admired and quoted, Shakespeare' s Sonnets have love, beauty and the passing of time at their heart. Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry (' Shall I compare thee to a summer' s day? ', ' Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds' ), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love. Enticing lovers and scholars alike, these 154 beautiful and sensual sonnets are as relevant and important today as when they were written 400 years ago. Enticing lovers and scholars alike, these 154 beautiful and sensual sonnets are as relevant and important today as when they were written 400 years ago.

THE SONNETS

1

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’s 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, mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

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

2

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.

3

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live rememb’red not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

4

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?

Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

And, being frank, she lends to those are free.

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.

5

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.

6

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.

7

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,

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, ‘f...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Prefatory Note
• Contents
• The Theatre in Shakespeare’s Day
• Shakespeare: A Timeline
• Life & Times
• Money in Shakespeare’s Day
• The Sonnets
• Shakespeare: Words and Phrases
• About the Publisher