When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste; Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 5 For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe, And moan the expense of many a vanished sight. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er 10 The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before:-- But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored, and sorrows end. _William Shakespeare._ XXIX _SONNET._ From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 5 Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer’s story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; 10 They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you--you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. _William Shakespeare._ XXX _SONNET._ Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye 5 As the perfumèd tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses; But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwooed, and unrespected fade; 10 Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth. _William Shakespeare._ XXXI _SONNET._