Romantic Selections 3
From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki
Title: Romantic Selections III
Author: William Shakespeare
XVIII - 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 ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
XXIX - When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, 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 remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
LX - Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end, Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow. And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
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 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.
CXXXVII - Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes That they behold and see not what they see? They know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is, take the worst to be. If eyes corrupt by overpartial looks, Be anchored in the bay where all men ride, Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks, Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied? Why should my heart think that a several plot Which my heart knows the wide world's common place? Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not To put fair truth upon so foul a face? In things right true my heart and eyes have erred, And to this false plague are they now transferred.