Thursday March 11, 2010

Your sonnets are due tomorrow, Friday 12 March
vocabulary 10 is due Monday 15 March.

A taste of Shakespeare’s sonnets

XX

1. A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
2. Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
3. A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
4. With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
5. An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
6. Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
7. A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
8. Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
9. And for a woman wert thou first created;
10. Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
11. And by addition me of thee defeated,
12. By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
13. But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
14. Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.



XCVII

1. How like a winter hath my absence been
2. From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
3. What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
4. What old December's bareness everywhere!
5. And yet this time removed was summer's time;
6. The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
7. Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
8. Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
9. Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
10. But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
11. For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
12. And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
13. Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
14. That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

CXLVII

1. My love is as a fever longing still,
2. For that which longer nurseth the disease;
3. Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
4. The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
5. My reason, the physician to my love,
6. Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
7. Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
8. Desire is death, which physic did except.
9. Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
10. And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
11. My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
12. At random from the truth vainly expressed;
13. For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
14. Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
CIX

1. O! never say that I was false of heart,
2. Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
3. As easy might I from my self depart
4. As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
5. That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
6. Like him that travels, I return again;
7. Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
8. So that myself bring water for my stain.
9. Never believe though in my nature reigned,
10. All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
11. That it could so preposterously be stained,
12. To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
13. For nothing this wide universe I call,
14. Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

LXXIII

1. That time of year thou mayst in me behold
2. When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
3. Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
4. Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
5. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
6. As after sunset fadeth in the west;
7. Which by and by black night doth take away,
8. Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
9. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
10. That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
11. As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
12. Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
13. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
14. To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

XXVII


1. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
2. The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
3. But then begins a journey in my head
4. To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
5. For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
6. Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
7. And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
8. Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
9. Save that my soul's imaginary sight
10. Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
11. Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
12. Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
13. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
14. For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.




II
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.


VI

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.


XVIII

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 ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.