Sonnet XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless

cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

When to the sessions of sweet silent

thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's
waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless
night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled

woe,

And moan the expense of maný a vanished
sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear
friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end,

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Sonnet LVII

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock

for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu;

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought

Save, where you are how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love that in your will, Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on

youth

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow, Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to

mow:

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Sonnet LXIV

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried

age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down

razed

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.