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And wear their brave state out of memory.
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Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
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Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
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Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay
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To change your day of youth to sullied night,
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And all in war with Time for love of you,
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As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
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But wherefore do not you a mightier way
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Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time?
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And fortify yourself in your decay
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With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
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Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
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And many maiden gardens yet unset,
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With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,
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Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
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So should the lines of life that life repair
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Which this (Time’s pencil) or my pupil pen
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Neither in inward worth nor outward fair
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Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
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To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,
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And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.
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Who will believe my verse in time to come
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If it were filled with your most high deserts?
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Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
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Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
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If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
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And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
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The age to come would say this poet lies,
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Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.
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So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
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Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
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And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage,
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And stretched metre of an antique song.
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But were some child of yours alive that time,
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You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme.
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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
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Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
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And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
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Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
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And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
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And every fair from fair sometime declines,
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By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
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But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
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Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
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Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
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When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
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So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
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So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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Devouring Time blunt thou the lion’s paws,
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And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
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Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
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And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
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Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
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And do whate’er thou wilt swift-footed Time
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To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
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But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
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O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
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Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
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Him in thy course untainted do allow,
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For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
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Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
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My love shall in my verse ever live young.
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A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,
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Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
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A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted
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With shifting change as is false women’s fashion,
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An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
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Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
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A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
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Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
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And for a woman wert thou first created,
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Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
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And by addition me of thee defeated,
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By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
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But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
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Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
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So is it not with me as with that muse,
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Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
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Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,
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And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
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Making a couplement of proud compare
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With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems:
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With April’s first-born flowers and all things rare,
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That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
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O let me true in love but truly write,
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And then believe me, my love is as fair,
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As any mother’s child, though not so bright
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As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air:
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Let them say more that like of hearsay well,
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I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
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My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
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So long as youth and thou are of one date,
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But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
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Then look I death my days should expiate.
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For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
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Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
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Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,
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How can I then be elder than thou art?
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O therefore love be of thyself so wary,
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