Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/15

Shakespeare's Sonnets 

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye

That thou consum'st 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 unus'd, 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 belov'd of many,

But that thou none lov'st 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 lodg'd 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.

 4 makeless: mateless

5 still: continually

10 his: its  7 beauteous roof: your body 