SONNET CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove;
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks upon tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickel's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But it bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
SONNET CII
My love is strenthene'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear;
That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
As Philomel in summer's front door doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mornful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens ever bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song.
SONNET CXLII
Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving;
O, but with mine compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents,
Be it lawful, I love thee, as though lovest those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:
Root pity in thy heart, that, when it grows,
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self-example mayst though be denied!
SONNET CXLI
In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote;
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee along:
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.
