SONNET.

SONNET.

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love.
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no; it is an ever-fixèd mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SONNET.

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 many a vanished sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances fore-gone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd 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.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

SONNET.

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.

O HOW much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their maskèd buds discloses
But, for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.

THESE various forms of dancing Love did frame,
And beside these, a hundred millions more,

And as he did invent, he taught the same,
With goodly gesture, and with comely show,
Now keeping state, now humbly honouring low:

And ever for the persons and the place

He taught most fit, and best according grace.

DANCING.

For Love, within his fertile working brain
Did then conceive those gracious virgins three,
Whose civil moderation does maintain

All decent order and conveniency,

And fair respect, and seemly modesty;

And then he thought it fit they should be born,
That their sweet presence dancing might adorn.

Hence is it that these Graces painted are

With hand in hand dancing an endless round;
And with regarding eyes, that still beware

That there be no disgrace amongst them found;
With equal foot they beat the flowery ground,

Laughing, or singing, as their passions will,
Yet nothing that they do becomes them ill.

Thus Love taught men, and men thus learned of Love
Sweet music's sound with feet to counterfeit,
Which was long time before high thundering Jove
Was lifted up to heaven's imperial seat:

For though by birth he were the prince of Crete,

Nor Crete, nor heaven, should the young prince have

seen,

If dancers with their timbrels had not been.

Since when all ceremonious mysteries,

All sacred orgies, and religious rites,

All pomps, and triumphs, and solemnities,
All funerals, nuptials, and like public sights,
All parliaments of peace, and warlike fights,
All learned arts, and every great affair,
A lively shape of dancing seems to bear.

DRINK to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise,
Doth ask a drink divine:

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;

But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.