Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer's honey breath hold

out

Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift

foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Sonnet LXVI

Tired with all these, for restful death I

cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would
I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot

If thinking on me then should make you

woe.

O, if, I say, you look upon this verse When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay, Lest the wise world should look into

your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

Sonnet LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such

day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take

away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in

rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

They that have power to hurt and will do

none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection

meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.