Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

Sonnet VI: (William Shakespeare)

Posted by David Emeron on

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-kill’d.

That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That’s for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thyself 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-will’d, for thou art much too fair
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

Sonnet V: (William Shakespeare)

Posted by David Emeron on

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:

For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness every where:

Then, were not summer’s distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distill’d though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

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:

Posted by David Emeron on

But shall thy youth’s proud beauty not yet wane,
Though fifty winters shall thy brow besiege;
Each furrow earned, a worthy harvest; gaining
Greater beauty each, for youth’s unease.

Thy treasure lieth deep in Wisdom’s care;
For all shall see, as bright as doth remain
Fair beauty’s lustful youth: Beyond compare,
Shall count thy beauty’s truth; and fond sustain

Those many or those few who might impute
Thee wisdom, beauty’s blood to thee compare;
Let thy succession, warm or aught, repute
Thee not, the better to be taught; for where

May please thy children wisdom to dilute;
Yet these, thy words, made wisdom beauty’s fruit.

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