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.
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.
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.
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.
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consumest thyself in single life? 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 spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murderous shame commits.
For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any, Who for thyself art so unprovident;
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lovest is most evident;
For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire, Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate,
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind! Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: Make thee another self, for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Born on the bier with white and bristly beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow:
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give: 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.
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,
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