So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were

Yourself again, after yourself's decease,

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of Winter's day,
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?

O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know
You had a father; let your son say so.

14.

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,

But not to tell of good or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
'Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict2 that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art,
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,

If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert ;3
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

2 Oft predict is frequent prediction or prognostication.

3 Meaning, apparently, "If thou wouldst turn to laying up a store from thyself for future years"; that is, change thy mind, get married, and have children to succeed thee. "As truth," &c., is equivalent to "That truth," &c.; as and that being used indifferently in the Poet's time.

15.

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment;
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And, all in war with Time, for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

16.

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay

With means more blessèd than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours;

And many maiden gardens, yet unset,4

With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit :

So should the line of life that life repair 6

5

Unset is unplanted; as we use setting or setting out, in the language of gardening.

5" Much more like you than your painted image or likeness." The Poet often has counterfeit in this sense. See page 55, note 5.

6 To repair in the sense of to renew. See vol. xviii. page 15, note II.Line of life probably means living line or lineage; used in contrast with "painted counterfeit," an inanimate image.

Which this time's pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair 7
Can make you live, yourself, in eyes of men.8
To give away yourself keeps yourself still;
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

17.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, Heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue;
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song:

But, were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, - in it, and in my rhyme.

18.

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 dimm'd;

7 Fair for fairness or beauty; the concrete for the abstract.

8 Live has for its object Which, referring to life. "Repair that life which nothing else can make you live, yourself," &c.

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or Nature's changing course, untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st 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.

19.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,"
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets,
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime :
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in the course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.10

9 Here fleets is used for a rhyme with sweets, while strict grammar requires fleetest. So in the 8th Sonnet:

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

10 This was a customary way of speaking among the sonnet-writers of that age, and so is not to be taken as if the Poet really had any such conceit or forecast of immortality, but merely as an allowed strain of poetical license. In like sort, Spenser repeatedly speaks as if he were fully assured

20.

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 steals 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 prick'd' thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.

that his lines would both possess and confer an eternity of youth and fame. So in his 75th Sonnet:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name;

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

And he has the same thought in at least two other Sonnets. So too in
Drayton's 44th:

To keep thee from oblivion and the grave,
Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish,
Where I entomb'd my better part shall save;
And, though this earthly body fade and die,
My name shall mount upon eternity.

A similar strain occurs in his 6th. The same promise of eternity is also met with in two of Daniel's. Thus in his 42d:

That grace which doth more than enwoman thee
Lives in my lines, and must eternal be.

1 Prick, both noun and verb, was very often used for mark. Shakespeare has it repeatedly thus. So in Julius Cæsar, iv. 1: "These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd." See, also, vol. xiii. page 172, note 24.