THAT time of year thou may’st in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold–Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang,In me thou see’st the twilight of such dayAs after Sunset fadeth in the West,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death’s second

BEING your slave, what should I do but tendUpon the hours and times of your desire?I have no precious time at all to spend,Nor services to do, till you require.Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hourWhilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,Nor think the bitterness of absence sourWhen you have bid your servant

O HOW much more doth beauty beauteous seemBy that sweet ornament which truth doth give!The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deemFor that sweet odour which doth in it live.The Canker-blooms have full as deep a dyeAs the perfumed tincture of the Roses,Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonlyWhen summer’s breath their masked

I.IT was a lording’s daughter, the fairest one of three,That liked of her master as well as well might be,Till looking on an Englishman, the fair’st that eye could see,Her fancy fell a-turning. Long was the combat doubtful that love with love did fight,To leave the master loveless, or kill the gallant knight:To put in

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end;Each changing place with that which goes before,In sequent toil all forwards do contend.Nativity, once in the main of light,Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight,And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.Time doth transfix

What is your substance, whereof are you made,That millions of strange shadows on you tend?Since everyone hath, everyone, one shade,And you, but one, can every shadow lend.Describe Adonis, and the counterfeitIs poorly imitated after you;On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,And you in Grecian tires are painted new.Speak of the spring and foison of

FAREWELL! thou art too dear for my possessing,And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;My bonds in thee are all determinate.For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?And for that riches where is my deserving?The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,And so my patent

THY bosom is endeared with all heartsWhich I, by lacking, have supposed dead:And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,And all those friends which I thought buried.How many a holy and obsequious tearHath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,As interest of the dead!–which now appearBut things removed that hidden in thee lie.Thou art

WHEN to the Sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancell’d woe,And moan th’ expense

WHEN, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possest,Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,With what I most enjoy contented