Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,For still temptation follows where thou art.Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;And when a woman woos, what woman’s sonWill sourly leave her till he have prevailed?Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,And chide thy beauty and thy straying…

Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,The world will wail thee like a makeless wife.The world will be thy widow and still weep,That thou no form of thee hast left behind,When every private widow well may keep,By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind.Look what an unthrift in the world doth spendShifts but his…

Such seems your beauty still. Three Winters coldHave from the forests shook three Summers’ pride;Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn’dIn process of the seasons have I seen,Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,Steal from his figure, and no…

And the mountain tops that freezeBow themselves when he did sing:To his music plants and flowersEver sprung; as sun and showersThere had made a lasting spring.Every thing that heard him play,Even the billows of the sea,Hung their heads and then lay by.In sweet music is such art,Killing care and grief of heartFall asleep, or hearing,…

The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,And of this book this learning mayst thou taste.The wrinkles which thy glass will truly showOf mouthed graves will give thee memory;Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst knowTime’s thievish progress to eternity.Look, what thy memory can not containCommit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt findThose children…

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 theeTo…

For what care I who calls me well or ill,So you o’ergreen my bad, my good allow?You are my all the world, and I must striveTo know my shames and praises from your tongue;None else to me, nor I to none alive,That my steeled sense or changes, right or wrong.In so profound abysm I throw…

Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,By unions married, do offend thine ear,They do but sweetly chide thee, who confoundsIn singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,Resembling sire…

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’dAnd the sad augurs mock their own presage;Incertainties now crown themselves assur’dAnd peace proclaims olives of endless age.Now with the drops of this most balmy timeMy love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,Since, spite…

Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,And being frank she lends to those are free:Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuseThe bounteous largess given thee to give?Profitless usurer, why dost thou useSo great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?For having traffic with thy self alone,Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:Then…

There I couch when owls do cry.On the bat’s back I do fly.After summer merrily:Merrily, merrily, shall I live nowUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough.

That love is merchandized, whose rich esteemingThe owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.Our love was new, and then but in the springWhen 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 nowThan when her mournful hymns…