Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/51

Shakespeare's Sonnets 

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:

The earth can yield me but a common grave,

When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live,—such virtue hath my pen,—

Where breath most breathes,—even in the mouths of men.

 

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;

And therefore art enforc'd to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devis'd

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair wert truly sympathiz'd

In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;

And their gross painting might be better us'd

Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus'd.

 6 to all the world: in the world's memory

11 to be: of future generations  2 attaint: disgrace

6 limit: mark, goal

8 time-bettering days: present greater age

10 strained:exaggerated

11 sympathiz'd: matched 