William Shakespeare

116

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:
Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But 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.



130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistres when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.



from Fear No more the Heat o' the Sun

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
	Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
	Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.



Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,
	To set a form upon desired change,
As I'll myself disgrace:  knowing thy will,
	I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,
Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue
	Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong
	And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

 - William Shakespeare