Life and Existence

The self-same sun that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike.

I’ll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes and weep.

Then comes in the sweet o’ the year.

I am a feather for each wind that blows.

He makes a July’s day short as December.

Paddling palms and pinching fingers.

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ the sun, And bleat the one at the other: what we chang’d Was innocence for innocence.

Two lads that thought there was no more behind But such a day tomorrow as today, And to be boy eternal.

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

O benefit of ill!

And ruin’d love, when it is built anew, Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

My nature is subdu’d To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

Alas! ’tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offenses of affections new.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d, And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, Such seems your beauty still.

When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rime, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express’d Even such a beauty as you master now.

The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

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.

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 55

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 ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

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 ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

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.

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.

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.