Tag Archives: British

Sonnet IV:

Posted by David Emeron on

Wilt spend thou Nature’s battle unaware
And lend thy loveliness when thou agree
To legacy–or Heaven as thou dare?
This battle, free to lose;  for the degree

That this abuse could bounteous appear;
To use this matchless contest; wouldst thou care
To give thy future someone to revere?
To live, what legacy wouldst thou prepare?

Thyself, as though alone reflected are;
No epigone–when fall thyself so near–
To traffic nature’s call?  Deceive and scar
This battlement to leave to thy frontier!

In this way, bring thee over from afar,
And what might be thine image, to a star.

This sonnet is part of a short, or
possibly at some point, very long
sequence; click here to read it all:

Sonnet IV: (William Shakespeare)

Posted by David Emeron on

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free.

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.

Sonnet III:

Posted by David Emeron on

That glass, one face doth from another, shield,
When mirrored, grace thy fair and barren bloom.
To form another, thou wouldst not be healed;
So blest, wouldst thou thy mother’s youth resume?

No fairer she, shouldst thou thy youth regain;
Nor he, by his posterity revealed.
Thou must not still thy husbandry disdain;
But fury-chafe, an till thy blighted field.

Doth Winter’s harvest care to April’s thresh;
Or dare to rite the golden Spring again?
Cares now Thy Prime for Legacy as Flesh;
When thou art loved and fond in love remain?

So choose: Thy tomb, in single fray enmesh;
Or Heaven’s womb, thine image pray make fresh.

This sonnet is part of a short, or
possibly at some point, very long
sequence; click here to read it all:

Sonnet III: (William Shakespeare)

Posted by David Emeron on

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.

But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

Sonnet II: (William Shakespeare)

Posted by David Emeron on

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:

Then being ask’d 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 deserved 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.

Intro 1: William Shakespeare, Sonnet I

Posted by David Emeron on

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
Continue reading →

Sonnet: Blessings of God’s Anointed

Posted by David Emeron on

Gaze upon me, O Lovely, and beware,
Or as thy frosts unfairly come, rejoice.
Fair-play with fortune will confound Despair
That, hideous with pride, hath shown its voice.

For never-resting, God’s anointed here
Excel: to verse thy numbered days, to bear
This work, to lend thee summer; and to year
Thy days, and keep thee and thy children fair.

In all our seasons, prisoners are we–
As checked, and sapped, and pent, as tyrants fear
All eyes the beauty we distil may see–
Who gift these days to winter they who sneer:

Though thieving Time all substance yet destroys,
We left thee more than wretched Time enjoys.

The final draft of this sonnet became part
of a short, or possibly at some point, very long
sequence; click here to read it all:

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