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WILLIAM
SHAKE-

SPEARE.

1564-1616.

A LESSON TAUGHT BY MUSIC.

MUSIC to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,

Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,

By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;

Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing :
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee;-"Thou single wilt prove none."

WILLIAM
SHAKE-

SPEARE.

1564-1616.

HOW TO LIVE TWICE.

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 beauty 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 metre of an antique song :

But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice ;--in it and in my rhyme.

WILLIAM
SHAKE-

SPEARE.

1564-1616.

THE UNFADING PICTURE.

SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate :

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
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 sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest :

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see :

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee and for myself no quiet find.

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And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least ;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on Thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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