Sonnets (Gays) de Shakespeare (3)

101

O truant muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed ?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends ;

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.

Make answer, muse. Wilt thou not haply say

'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,

Beauty no pencil beauty's truth to lay,

But best is best if never intermixed'?

Because he needs no praise wilt thou be dumb ?

Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,

And to be praised of ages yet to be.

   Then do thy office, muse ; I teach thee how

   To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming.

I love not less, though less the show appear.

That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming

The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new and then but in the spring

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days -

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

   Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,

   Because I would not dull you with my song.

103

Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth

That, having such a scope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Than when it hath my added praise beside !

O blame me not if I no more can write !

Look in your glass and there appears a face

That overgoes my blunt invention quite,

Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well ? -

For to no other pass my verses tend

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell ;

   And more, much more, than in my verse can sit

   Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old ;

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers' pride ;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his figure and no pace perceived ;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.

   For fear of which, her this, thou age unbred :

   Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

105

Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my belovèd as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence.

Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

'Fair, kind, and true' is all my argument,

'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words,

And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes on one, which wondrous scope affords.

   Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,

   Which three till now never kept seat in one.

106

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 ;

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

Ev'n 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 but 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.

107

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,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage ;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,

Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme

While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes ;

   And thou in this shalt find thy monument

   When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

108

What's in the brain that ink may character

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit ?

What's new to speak, what now to register,

That may express my love or thy dear merit ?

Nothing, sweet boy ; but yet like prayers divine

I must each day say o'er the very same,

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,

Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

So that eternal love in love's fresh case

Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

But makes antiquity for aye his page,

   Finding the first conceit of love there bred

   Where time and outward form would show it dead.

109

O never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify -

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.

That is my home of love. If I have ranged,

Like him that travels I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe, though in my nature reigned

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stained

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good ;

   For nothing this wide universe I call

   Save thou my rose ; in it thou art my all.

110

Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely. But, by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays proved thee my best of love.

Now all is done, have what shall have no end ;

Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined.

   Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

   Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.