The Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Wisehouse Classics Edition). William Shakespeare

thou, the master mistress of my passion;

      A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

      With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion:

      An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

      Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

      A man in hue all ‘hues’ in his controlling,

      Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

      And for a woman wert thou first created;

      Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

      And by addition me of thee defeated,

      By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

      But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,

      Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

XXI

       So is it not with me as with that Muse,

      Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,

      Who heaven itself for ornament doth use

      And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

      Making a couplement of proud compare’

      With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,

      With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare,

      That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.

      O! let me, true in love, but truly write,

      And then believe me, my love is as fair

      As any mother’s child, though not so bright

      As those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air:

      Let them say more that like of hearsay well;

      I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

XXII

       My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

      So long as youth and thou are of one date;

      But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,

      Then look I death my days should expiate.

      For all that beauty that doth cover thee,

      Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

      Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:

      How can I then be elder than thou art?

      O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary

      As I, not for myself, but for thee will;

      Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary

      As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

      Presume not on th;heart when mine is slain,

      Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

XXIII

       As an unperfect actor on the stage,

      Who with his fear is put beside his part,

      Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

      Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;

      So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

      The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,

      And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,

      O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.