A Woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou the master-mistress of my passion;
A Woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steal Men's eyes and Women's souls amazeth :
And for a Woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing:
But since she marked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composéd wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or where better they,
Or whether revolution be the same:
O! sure I am the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And Beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,
must make unnecessary alterations by way of improving Shakspeare, he tries his hand at a transposition thus:
"The painful warrior for worth famousèd
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour quite razèd.'
And he unostentatiously remarks that the rhyme may be recovered in that way' without further change.
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 expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now!
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked not with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or Nature's changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart:
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all others in all worths surmount:
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read ;
Self so self-loving were iniquity:
'Tis thee myself-that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date:
But when in thee Time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate:
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me;
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O, therefore, Love, be of thyself so wary,
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill:
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
What is your substance? whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend!
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and foison of the year :
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear,
And you in every blessed shape we know:
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.
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 perfuméd tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When Summer's breath their maskéd 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.
SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, PROMISING
SHAKSPEARE'S two dominant ideas in the sonnets written for the Earl of Southampton are, first, to get the Earl married, and next to make him immortal. In these present he has grown bolder in his tone, and apparently more conscious of his power. It is quite likely that the Earl's fight with fortune had begun when most of these were written, and the Poet grows defiant of time and fate on his friend's behalf. In the sonnet which I have placed as Dedicatory to the group, the poet unwittingly tells us how great was his own personal modesty. When he is with the Earl he is unable to say how much he loves him; cannot do any justice in expression to his own feelings, and so he asks that his books, his writings, may speak for him, silently eloquent.
|
