Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/228

 ��WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sonnets


 * HALL 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 dimmM; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd: But thy eternal Summer ^shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wandcrest in hit, shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can bee. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

156 (a)

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 least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising Haply I think on thee: and then my state, Like to the Lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate; For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.

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