as they go.

Look, how the world's poor people are amazed

At apparitions, signs, and prodigies, Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies;

So she at these sad signs draws up her
breath,

And, sighing it again, exclaims on
Death.

"Hard-favored tyrant, ugly, meager, lean, Hateful divorce of love,"-thus chides she Death

To the disposing of her troubled brain; Who bids them still consort with ugly night, And never wound the heart with looks again;

Who, like a king perplexed in his throne, By their suggestion gives a deadly groan,

Whereat each tributary subject quakes; As when the wind, imprisoned in the ground, Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes,

Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound.

This mutiny each part doth so surprise, That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes;

"O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill!

At his own shadow let the thief run mad, Himself himself seek every hour to kill! Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill;

For who so base would such an office have

As slanderous deathsman to so base a slave?

"The baser is he, coming from a king, To shame his hope with deeds degenerate. The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honored or begets him hate;

For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. The moon being clouded presently is missed,

But little stars may hide them when they list.

"The crow may bathe his coal-black wings

in mire,

And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, The stain upon his silver down will stay. Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day.

Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,

But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

"Out, idle words! servants to shallow fools, Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators! Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools; Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;

To trembling clients be you mediators.

For me, I force not argument a straw, Since that my case is past the help of law.

"In vain I rail at Opportunity,

SONNETS

2

WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held.
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an ill-eating shame and thriftless
praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,

If thou couldst answer, "This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count and make my old

In vain I cavil with mine infamy,

In vain I spurn at my confirmed despite: This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.

The remedy indeed to do me good
Is to let forth my foul-defiled blood."

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,