From fairest creatures we desire increase,That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,But as the riper should by time decease,His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,Making a famine where abundance lies,Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art […]

When forty winters shall besiege thy browAnd dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,Thy youth’s proud livery, so gaz’d on now,Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.How […]

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewestNow is the time that face should form another;Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear’d wombDisdains the tillage of thy husbandry?Or who is he so fond will be the tombOf […]

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spendUpon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,And being frank she lends to those are free. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuseThe bounteous largess given thee to give?Profitless usurer, why dost thou useSo great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with […]

Those hours, that with gentle work did frameThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel: For never-resting time leads summer onTo hideous winter and confounds him there;Sap cheque’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness every where: Then, were […]

Then let not winter’s ragged hand defaceIn thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d:Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some placeWith beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-kill’d. That use is not forbidden usury,Which happies those that pay the willing loan;That’s for thyself to breed another thee,Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; Ten […]