Shakespeare's Sonnets

17
Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If i could write the beaty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say "This poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces."
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage
And stretched meter of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive at that time
You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.

18
Shall i compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of Maym
and summer's lease hath all too short a date.
sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
BUt thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose ossession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws.
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, wift-fotted Time,
to the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But i forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen.
Him in they course untainted to allow,
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.