Life and Existence

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.

Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.

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-rased 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 wat’ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store.

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-rased 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 wat’ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity.

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen.

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 times’ waste.

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.

The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil’d, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

Everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment.

Everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field.

Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d.

Quiet consummation have; And renowned be thy grave!

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

He shall have a noble memory.

Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies A lass unparallel’d.