Change and Transformation

I am a feather for each wind that blows.

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

O benefit of ill!

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.

The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 55

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.

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.

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.

The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us, and present Our Alexandrian revels. Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I’ the posture of a whore.

And it is great To do that thing that ends all other deeds, Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

The wheel is come full circle.

She that herself will sliver and disbranch From her material sap, perforce must wither And come to deadly use.

The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious.

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

It makes us, or it mars us.

They say best men are molded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad.

A breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences.

Thou hast nor youth nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant.

Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.

O! when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, The enterprise is sick.