SHAKESPEARE SONNETS FROM 31 TO 40
31
Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which 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 tear
Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie! Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung
with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.
32
If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp’d by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.’
33
Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing
with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the
basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my
sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.
