Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets.djvu/80

Rh

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give. The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour, which doth in it live. The canker blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses. Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses: But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade; Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
 * And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
 * When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom.
 * So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
 * You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.