Sonnets

We want the most beautiful people to have children, so their beauty will be preserved forever—when the parent dies, the child he leaves behind will remind us of his beauty. But you, in love with your own pretty eyes, are letting your beauty burn itself out. You’re starving the world of your beauty rather than spreading the wealth around. You’re acting like your own worst enemy! Right now you’re the best-looking thing in the world, the only person as beautiful as springtime. But your beauty is like a new bud, and you’re letting it die before it can develop and bring you true happiness. You’re a young man, but you act like an old miser—you’re wasting your beauty by hoarding it and keeping it to yourself! Take pity on the rest of us, or this is how you’ll be remembered: as the greedy pig who hogged his own beauty and took it with him to the grave.

When forty years have gone by and carved deep wrinkles in your forehead, your youthful beauty, which everyone likes to look at now, will be worth little. Then, when someone asks you where all your beauty is—all the treasure of your virile youth—if you were to say that it’s all there in your withered face and sunken eyes, that would be an all-consuming shame and nothing to be proud of. You’d have a much better excuse if, decades from now, you could say you spent your beauty and youth raising a child. If someone were to ask you why you looked so old, you could say, “The effort I spent raising this beautiful child explains the sorry old state I’m in”—and meanwhile your child’s beauty would be a new incarnation of your own! Having a beautiful child would be like being born again in old age, with the blood that flows coldly in your old veins becoming warm again in his.

Look in your mirror and tell the face you see that it’s time to father a child. Your face is fresh and healthy now, but if you don’t reproduce it, you’ll be cheating the world and cursing a woman who would happily be your child’s mother. After all, do you think there’s a woman out there so beautiful that she’d refuse to have your child? And what man would be so foolish as to allow his own self-absorption to stop himself from fathering children? You are like a mirror to your own mother, and when she looks at you she can gaze back at the lovely springtime of her youth. In the same way, when you are old and wrinkled, you’ll be able to look at your child and see yourself in your prime. But if you choose not to have a child to remember you, you’ll die alone and leave no memory of your own image.

You wasteful lovely person, why are you spending all of your beauty on yourself? Nature doesn’t give us anything; she only lends us the gifts we get at birth, and, being generous herself, she lends the most to people who are generous themselves. So, you beautiful miser, why do you abuse the bountiful gifts that were given to you to share with others? Why do you insist on being such a bad investor, using up the immense treasure you have to offer the world but unable to support yourself or preserve your memory? By only having dealings with yourself, you’re cheating yourself out of the best part of yourself. Then how, when nature says it’s time for you to go, will you be able to give an acceptable account of how you spent your time and beauty? Your unused beauty will have to be buried with you. But if you used that beauty now, it would stay behind once you were gone and preserve your legacy.

The same process that over time shaped your wonderful face, so that now everybody loves to look at you, will eventually destroy that face, making ugly what is now surpassingly beautiful. For never-resting Time takes summer by the hand, leads him into horrifying winter, and destroys him there—freezing his sap, removing his full leaves, covering up his beauty with snow, and turning everything bare. If we didn’t have perfume distilled from summer flowers to keep in a jar, the effects of summer would vanish at the end of the season. Without perfume, we’d have no way of remembering the summer itself or its beauty. But the flowers used to make perfume lose only their outward beauty when winter comes; their beautiful scent lives on sweetly.

(Continuing from Sonnet 5) So don’t let wintry old age destroy your summer beauty before your essence has been preserved. Make some woman pregnant and pass on your beauty before it dies with you. It’s unfair to charge exorbitant interest on a loan. But if you lend a woman your body, she’ll be only too happy to pay you back with a child. Having a child—making another version of yourself—will make you happy. Having ten children will make you ten times as happy. What power would death have over you if you left children behind to keep your legacy alive? Don’t be willful and selfish—you’re much too beautiful to be conquered by death, with nothing left of you but a corpse devoured by worms.

When the gracious light of the sun rises in the east, each person on earth pays homage to it by gazing upon all its sacred majesty. And even at noon, once the sun has climbed the steep path to the top of the sky, it still looks like a strong young man in his prime and human beings still adore its beauty, watching it pass on its way like a golden king making a pilgrimage. But when the sun grows weary and falls from its highest point, it reels like an old man, and the people who once looked up at it so dutifully stop looking and turn the other way. In the same way, you, wasting your sexual energy in the prime of your life, will die alone and unloved unless you father a son.

You’re like music to listen to, so why does listening to music make you sad? Delightful and joyful things should complement one another. So why do you love things that make you unhappy and enjoy things that are bad for you? If music played well and in tune sounds bad to you, it’s because that music is rebuking you for not playing your own part—not making your own harmony—by getting married and having children. Notice how the sound of two strings vibrating together in harmony is like a father and child and happy mother, who all sing one pleasing note together. Though their music has no words, the unity of their voices sings this warning to you: If you stay single, you’ll be a childless nobody.

Are you eating up your own life by remaining single because you’re afraid your widow will cry when you die? Ah, if you happen to die childless, the entire world will mourn for you like a wife who’s lost her husband. The world will be your widow and weep forever about the fact that you didn’t leave a copy of yourself. But if you had left a wife behind, she’d have had her children to look at and remind her of her husband. A person who wastes his money is just shifting money around—at least the money’s still in the world. But if beauty is wasted, the world loses it forever: If a beautiful person doesn’t use his beauty, he destroys it. The person who would commit such a murderous outrage on himself has no love in his heart for others.

If you have any sense of shame, admit that you don’t have any love in your heart for anyone, since you’re so unwilling to care about yourself. I’ll admit, if you like, that many people love you, but it’s also obvious that you love no one. For you are so possessed with murderous hatred that you have no problem plotting against yourself, seeking to destroy the house that you should want to repair. Oh, change your way of thinking, so I can change my mind about you. Should hate have a more beautiful home than love? Be gracious and kind, like your appearance—or at least be kind-hearted to yourself. Have a child out of love for me, so your beauty will live on in your children, if not in you.

As fast as you will decline, you could grow again just as fast, through one of your children. The youth and vigor that you would pass on to a child now that you’re still young, you could call your own when you’re no longer young. In marriage and childbirth lie wisdom, beauty, and reproduction. Without them you have only foolishness, age, and the cold decay of death. If everyone thought like you, the human race would end, and in sixty years there’d be no more world. Let the people who aren’t good enough to preserve—the rough, ugly, poor people—die childless. Nature gave abundantly to the people whom she endowed with beauty, and you should cherish her gifts by being generous with them. Nature made you her stamp, to serve as a template for all human beauty. She meant for you to make copies of yourself, so that the original—you—wouldn’t die.

When I look at the clock and notice time ticking away, and see splendid day sink into hideous night; when I see the violet wilt and curly black hair turn white with age; when I see tall trees that once provided shade for herds now barren of leaves, and the summer’s crops tied up and hauled to the barn as if summer itself were an old man being carried off to his grave—then I have doubts about the fate of your beauty, since you too will have to undergo the ravages of time. Sweet and beautiful creatures don’t stay that way; they die as fast as they see others grow. And there’s no defense against Time’s destructive power, except perhaps to have children—to defy Time when he takes you away.

Oh, how I wish you were yourself! But, my love, your identity will only last as long as you’re alive. You should make preparations in anticipation of your inevitable death and pass on your beautiful appearance to someone else. That way, your beauty, which you’ve only borrowed, wouldn’t have to end. Then, even after you died, your beautiful body would be renewed in your children. Who would let such a beautiful house fall into disrepair when prudent maintenance might make it outlast the stormy gusts of winter and the frustrating barrenness surrounding death? Only the most irresponsible spender could do such a thing, you know, my dear love. You had a father—let your son be able to say the same.

I don’t base my judgments on the stars, and yet it does seem to me I know astrology. I can’t foresee good or bad events—predict plagues, famines, or what a season will be like. Nor can I predict down to the minute what each person’s misfortunes are going to be. Nor can I tell princes whether things will go well for them by looking at the heavens. But I can forecast the future by looking in your eyes. I see by those reliable guides that truth and beauty will thrive if you would only pass your attributes on to a child. Otherwise, this is what I predict: When you die, truth and beauty will die with you.

When I think about the fact that every living thing is perfect only for a brief time, that the whole world is one big stage on which the stars secretly control the action; when I see that men grow like plants, encouraged and then thwarted by the same sky, exulting in their youthful vigor and then declining just when they’re at their height, vanishing until their glory is no longer even remembered; when I think about the whole world’s instability—then I think of you, a youth enjoying so many of nature’s rich gifts. In my mind, I see time and decay debating with each other about how to corrupt your sunny youth, how to convert it to old age and night. Out of love for you, I wage war against time: As he takes away your youth, I continually recreate you in these poems.

(Continuing from Sonnet 15) But why not take advantage of a stronger way to fight against this bloody tyrant, Time, and strengthen yourself in your old age in a happier way than with my useless sonnets? Now your capacity for pleasure is at its peak, and many virtuous maidens would love to marry you and bear your children, who would recreate your image much better than any artificial reproduction such as a painting or poem. The faces of your children will renew your life. Time created you and brought you to your present state of perfection, but it cannot preserve your inner worth or outer beauty, and neither can my poetry. Having a baby would preserve your image and ensure that you live on by your own design.

Who in the future will ever believe my poetry if I praise you as you deserve? Though, I have to admit, my poetry is like a tomb that actually hides what you are really like and doesn’t manage to show even half of your true qualities. If I could capture in my writing how beautiful your eyes are and create new verses to list all of your wonderful attributes, decades from now people would say, “This poet lies. No human face was ever so divine.” In this way, my poems (yellowed with age), would be scorned, like old men who talk too much without saying anything true, and what is really your due would be dismissed as a poet’s madness, the false verses of an old song. But if some child of yours were still alive then, you would live twice: in the child, and in my poetry.

Shall I compare you to a summer day? You’re lovelier and milder. Rough winds shake the pretty buds of May, and summer doesn’t last nearly long enough. Sometimes the sun shines too hot, and often its golden face is darkened by clouds. And everything beautiful stops being beautiful, either by accident or simply in the course of nature. But your eternal summer will never fade, nor will you lose possession of your beauty, nor shall death brag that you are wandering in the underworld, once you’re captured in my eternal verses. As long as men are alive and have eyes with which to see, this poem will live and keep you alive.

Devouring Time, go ahead and blunt the lion’s paws. Make the earth swallow up her own creatures. Pluck the sharp teeth out of the fierce tiger’s jaws, and burn the long-lived phoenix in its own blood. Make happy and sad times as you fly by, and do whatever you want, swift-footed Time, to the wide world and all its vanishing delights. But I forbid you to commit one heinous crime. Oh, don’t carve wrinkles into my love’s beautiful forehead, and don’t draw lines there with your old pen. Let him pass through time untainted, to serve as the model of beauty for men to come. But do your worst, old Time. Despite your wrongs, my love will stay young forever in my poetry.

Your face is as pretty as a woman’s, but you don’t even have to use makeup—you, the man (or should I saywoman?) I love. Your heart is as gentle as a woman’s, but it isn’t cheating like theirs. Your eyes are prettier than women’s, but not as roving—you bless everything you look at. You’ve got the good looks of a handsome man, but you attract both womenand men. When Mother Nature made you, she originally intended to make you a woman, but then she got carried away with her creation and screwed me by adding a certainthing that I have no use for. But since she gave you a prick to please women, I’ll keep your love, and they can enjoy your body.

I’m not like that other poet who writes about a woman who’s pretty because she wears a lot of makeup. In his verses, he compares her to heaven itself, and to every other beautiful thing—the sun and moon, the rich gems of earth and sea, the first flowers of April, and all the rest of the precious things on the face of the earth. Since I reallyam in love, I just want to write the truth, and when I do, believe me—my lover is as beautiful as any human being, though maybe not as bright as the stars. Whoever actually likes those love-poem clichés can say more; I’m not trying to sell anything, so I won’t waste time with praise.

I won’t believe my mirror when it tells me I’m old, as long as you’re still young. But when I see you with wrinkles, then I’ll know death is on its way, because your beauty is as close to my heart as beautiful clothing to a body. Put another way, my heart beats in your chest and yours in mine. But if that’s true, then how can I be older than you? Therefore, my love, take care of yourself just as I will take care of myself, not for my own sake, but because I have your heart inside of me, which I will protect as carefully as a nurse her baby. Don’t expect to get your heart back from me when mine is dead. You gave it to me forever, never to be returned.

Like an actor who hasn’t learned his lines perfectly and forgets his part because of stage fright, or like some raging animal or human whose excessive passion makes it weak, so I, because I can’t trust myself, forget to say the things a lover should say to his darling; just when my love is strongest it seems to be getting weak. So let my writings speak for my heart instead. They plead for love better than I could if I spoke, even if I said more and more eloquently. Oh, read in these silent lines the love I cannot express in speech. Love will give you the insight to read between the lines.

My eye has acted like a painter and engraved your beautiful image on the canvas of my heart. My body is the frame that holds this picture; to draw that picture with perspective, realistically representing depth, is the highest skill a painter could have. Only via this painter—my eye—can you find the image of you that dwells continually in my heart: Your own eyes are the windows into my heart. Now look at the favors our eyes have done for each other: My eyes have drawn your shape, and your eyes are windows into which I can look to see my own heart, into which the sun also likes to look, taking a peep at your reflection. Yet my eyes lack a certain skill that would grace the others they already have: They can only draw what they see; they don’t see into your heart.

Let fortunate people boast about their prizes and their titles, while I—who am not lucky enough to get such rewards—experience unexpected joy in what I honor most: your love. Those courtiers who enjoy high status because they’re the favorites of great princes are like marigolds. They bloom as long as the sun shines on them, but their pride is fragile—one frown will kill them. And once a famous warrior who has painfully endured and won a thousand battles is defeated, he’s stripped of all his honors, and all of the successes that he worked for are forgotten. How much happier am I, who love and am loved in a place I cannot leave and from which others cannot remove me.

My love, I am your absolute servant; your worth compels me to serve you loyally. I’m sending you this message to show my devotion to you, not to show that I can write well. My skills are so poor that I may make my obligation to you, which is great, seem meager. I don’t have the words to express it properly. But I hope that in your heart you’ll form an idea of what I mean and the idea will enrich your sense of what I owe you. When the star that guides me shines on me favorably, giving me the inspiration to dress up my tattered love for you in clever words that prove I’m worthy of your sweet respect—that’s when I’ll dare to boast about how much I love you. Until then, I won’t show my face anywhere that you can put me to the test.

Weary from work, I hasten to my bed, the sweet place of rest for a body tired out from laboring. But then I start to go on a journey in my head, making my mind work after my body’s work is finished. Because when I go to bed, my thoughts begin the trip from where I am, far away from you, to where you are. They keep my weary eyes wide open, staring at the darkness like blind people do. Except, in my imagination, I see your image, though it’s too dark to see anything else. Like a shining jewel hanging in the terrifying night, your image makes that old, black night look beautiful and young. See, because of you, my body does not rest in the daytime and my mind finds no peace at night.

(Continuing from Sonnet 27) So how can I return in a cheerful state of mind when I’m prevented from getting any rest? When the oppression I experience during the day isn’t relieved by any sleep at night, but instead my sleepless nights oppress me during the day and my wearisome days oppress me at night? And though day and night are natural enemies, they’ve shook hands and made a bargain to both torture me, the day with labor, the night with thoughts of how far away you are as I labor over thoughts of you. I try to please the day by telling him how bright you are—so bright that you take the sun’s place when clouds cover the sky. In the same way, I use you to flatter black night, telling him how you brighten the evening sky when stars don’t shine. But they both—day and night—only prolong my sorrows, and night by night this prolonged grief grows stronger.

When I’m in disgrace with everyone and my luck has deserted me, I sit all alone and cry about the fact that I’m an outcast, and bother God with useless cries, which fall on deaf ears, and look at myself and curse my fate, wishing that I had more to hope for, wishing I had this man’s good looks and that man’s friends, this man’s skills and that man’s opportunities, and totally dissatisfied with the things I usually enjoy the most. Yet, as I’m thinking these thoughts and almost hating myself, I happen to think about you, and then my condition improves—like a lark at daybreak rising up and leaving the earth far behind to sing hymns to God. For when I remember your sweet love, I feel so wealthy that I’d refuse to change places even with kings.

When I sit alone in silence and remember the past, I get depressed about all the things I don’t have that I once strived for, and I add to old griefs new tears for all the valuable time I’ve wasted. Then I can drown my eyes, which are not usually wet from crying, in tears for precious friends who are dead, and I can weep again for hurts in loves that are long since over and moan about the loss of many things I’ll never see again. Then I can grieve about grievances I had let go of and sadly recount each woe that I’d already cried about in the past, feeling the pain all over again, as if I hadn’t suffered over these things already. But if I think about you, my dear friend, while I’m doing all of this, I get back everything I’d lost, and all my sorrows end.

You have the love of everyone who used to love me, people who I supposed were dead because I didn’t have their love anymore. Love reigns in your heart—both everything belonging to love and all those friends who I thought were dead and buried. How many tears of devoted love have I shed at funerals, in payment to the dead, when now it appears they had only gone to hide in your heart. You’re like a grave where dead lovers come alive again, decorated with mementos of those lost loves who gave you all the love I owed to each of them. All the love I owed to many is now yours alone. I see these lovers in you, and you, who contain everyone I have ever loved or was loved by, have all of me.

If you survive me, living on after dust covers my bones, and you should happen to read over again these poor, crude sonnets written by the man who once loved you, remember that things have improved since my day. So even though any poet today could write better sonnets, keep my poems for the sake of my love, not for my skill, which luckier men have far surpassed. And grant me this loving thought: “If my friend’s inspiration was paired with the advantages today’s poets have, his love would have brought forth better poems than these, to rank alongside those of today’s better poets. But since he died, and poets are better now, I’ll read their poems for their style, his for his love.”

I’ve seen many beautiful mornings in which the sun beautifies the mountaintops, kissing the green meadows with its golden face and making streams sparkle as if by magic. But then it suddenly permits the nastiest clouds to ride across its heavenly face, and it hides from the forlorn world, sneaking off to the west in disgrace. In exactly this way, early one morning my sun shone on my face with triumphant splendor, but alas he was only mine for one hour. The clouds have hidden him from me now. But I don’t fault him for this at all. Golden men like him can disgrace themselves as much as the real sun does.

Sun, why did you make it look like today was going to be such a beautiful day, so that I went out without my cloak, only to let nasty clouds overtake me on my way, hiding your radiance behind their poisonous mist? It’s not enough that you broke through the clouds and dried the rain off my storm-beaten face, because no man can be satisfied with a cure that heals the physical injury but doesn’t take away the disgrace. Nor does it comfort me that you’re ashamed, because even though you regret what you did, I have still lost out. When someone takes something away from you, their being sorry doesn’t help much. Ah, but those tears you’re shedding out of love for me are like pearls—very valuable ones—and they make up for all your bad deeds.

Don’t be upset anymore about what you did. Everything has its bad side: Roses have thorns, sparkling fountains have mud, the sun and the moon are periodically covered up by clouds and eclipses, and disgusting worms live in the sweetest flowers. All men do bad things—even me, right now: As I excuse your transgression by comparing it to other things, I corrupt myself by making excuses for your misdeeds (more excuses for these little sins than they even require). Because what I’m doing is taking your sins, which were just physical urges, and putting my mind to work on their behalf. The person you’ve hurt is now advocating for you—I’m now pleading the case against myself. I’m so conflicted between love and hate that I can’t resist helping that sweet villain who bitterly injures me every hour.

I acknowledge that the two of us have to part, even though we’re united in love. That way I can take those disgraces that we’ve incurred together all onto myself, bearing them without any help from you. Our love for one another gives us common cause, despite this awful situation that forces us apart, which, though it can’t prevent us from being united in love, still robs us of sweet hours of pleasure together. I can never greet you openly again, because my guilt would bring shame upon you. Nor can you ever honor me with public kindness without dishonoring your own reputation. But don’t do that. I love you so much that I value your good reputation as my own.

Just as a decrepit father takes pleasure in seeing his active child engaging in youthful activities, so I, whom misfortune has injured and crippled, take all the comfort I can in your good worth and fidelity. For whether beauty, nobility, wealth, and intelligence—or any one of these, or all of them, or more than these—are your princely attributes, I’m attaching my love to them. I’m not lame, poor, or despised, as long as this fantasy of mine lets me take so much satisfaction in your good luck and I can live off part of your glory. Whatever is best, that’s what I wish you to have. Since I have this wish, I’m lucky ten times over.

How could I lack things to write about while you’re alive? You pour inspiration into my poetry by giving me the sweetest subject to write about: yourself—too excellent a subject for ordinary writers to describe. Oh, give yourself the credit if you see anything in my writing that’s worth reading. For who is so speechless that he can’t write to you, when you yourself provide the creative spark? You should be the tenth muse, worth ten times more than those other nine invoked by poets. And whoever calls on you for inspiration, let him write eternal verses, to outlive even the farthest reaches of time. If my little bit of inspiration happens to please today’s demanding readers, the painful work can be mine, but the praise shall be yours.

How can I celebrate your worth in my poems without appearing conceited, given that you’re my better half? What good does it do me to praise myself—and am I doing anything besides praising myself when I praise you? For this reason, let’s live apart. And though we love each other dearly, let’s lose our common identity; by this separation, I can give you the praise that you deserve by yourself. Oh, absence, you would be such a torment if it weren’t for the fact that you give me the chance to fill up the lonely hours with thoughts of love, which make the time pass so sweetly, and that you teach me how to divide my love and me in two, as I, here, praise my friend while he remains elsewhere.

Take all my loves, my love—yes, take them all: Take my love for you, take away your love for me, and take a lover from me. What do you have now that you didn’t have before? My love, you haven’t acquired true love, because my true love was yours to begin with, before you took this extra from me. If, instead of accepting my love, you make love to the person, love, I can’t blame you, because you’re only taking advantage of my love. But, youshould be blamed if you deceive yourself by taking from one person what you won’t take from another—if you willingly make love to one person while refusing to make love to me. I forgive you for stealing from me, gentle thief, although you’re taking the little I have. And yet every lover knows that it hurts more to be injured by a lover than by an enemy. You, who are gracious even when succumbing to lust, you in whom everything bad looks good—even if you kill me with injuries, let’s not become enemies.

Those charming little infidelities that you commit when I’m away from you for awhile are understandable given your youth and beauty, since you’re continually tempted wherever you go. You’re noble and distinguished, so women see you as a prize catch. You’re beautiful, and therefore women pursue you aggressively. And when a woman is the pursuer, what man will rudely refuse her to get his point across? But, oh my—you might at least stay away from my mistress and keep your beauty and youthful urges in line, as they’re leading you into debauchery, which breaks two bonds: my mistress’ fidelity to me, which your beauty tempts her to break, and your bond with me, which your beauty, again, lets you break.

The fact that you now have my mistress isn’t the only reason I’m hurt, though it’s true that I loved her dearly. What makes me cry the most is that now she has you, a loss of love that hurts me even more. You two criminals in love, here’s how I’ll rationalize the pain you’ve caused me: You, friend, love her because you know I love her. And she loves you for the exact same reason, putting up with your praises and lovemaking for my sake, because she knows you’re my friend. If I lose you, it’s a win for my mistress. And if I lose her, you will have found what I’ve lost. Both of the people I love find each other, and I lose them both, and both cause me this pain. But here’s what makes me happy: My friend and I are one person. How gratifying!—It turns out my mistress loves only me.

My eyes work best when I’m asleep, because all day they look at things I don’t care about. When I sleep, my dreaming eyes alight on you and glitter brightly in the dark, having found your bright image there. Given that your shadowy dream-image brightens even the dark, how bright might you appear in daylight, when your own light is so much clearer? How bright, when your shadow shines so brightly to my eyes blinded by darkness? What good would it do my eyes to see you in the daytime when they already look at your beautiful image in the dead of night, as I sleep? Every day is as dark as night until I get to see you again, and every night is as bright as day when I see you in my dreams.

If I were made of thought instead of slow, dull flesh, this wicked distance between us wouldn’t keep me from where I wanted to be. No matter the distance—from the farthest possible regions—I would bring myself to where you are. It wouldn’t matter that my feet were standing on the spot on earth farthest from you: Thought is nimble enough to jump over both sea and land as quickly as it can think about the place it wants to be. But, ah, it’s killing me to think that I’m not made of thought and can’t leap over the many miles when you are gone. Instead my body is made of so much earth and water that I have to fill the long time without you with my moans. The leaden, deep earth and slow, wet water of which I am made give me nothing but heavy tears.

The other two elements, weightless air and purifying fire, both remain with you, wherever I may be. Air is my thoughts, and fire is my desire. The two of them slide back and forth between us swiftly and effortlessly. Normally I am made up of all four elements, but when my air and fire are off on their errand of love to you, I sink into depression and slide toward death, until air and fire return to restore the proper balance within me. Even now, they have returned from you to tell me that you’re well and in good health. I rejoice to hear this but then immediately grow gloomy from missing you, so I send them back to you and immediately grow sad again.

My eye and my heart have gone to war with each other. They’re fighting over who gets to control your image. My eye wants to bar my heart from the image that it formed, while my heart wants to keep my eye away fromits image. My heart insists that your image lies safely hidden inside of him, protected from eyes, which give everything away. But my eye, the defendant, denies the charges and argues that your beauty resides in him. To decide whose claim is right, I have assembled a jury consisting of my thoughts, all of which owe allegiance to the heart. And they have delivered a verdict to determine which portion of your image belongs to the eyes and which precious portion to the heart. This is what they say: My eyes have the rights to your outward appearance, and my heart has the right to love you and be loved by you.

My eye and my heart have reached an agreement, and now each does the other favors. When my eye is starving to take a look at you or my heart smothers itself with sighs of love for you, then my eye feasts on a painting of you and invites my heart to join in the banquet and stare at the painting too. On another occasion, my eye is the guest with whom my heart shares some of his thoughts of love. So when you are gone, you’re still present with me, either through your painting or in my love for you: You can’t travel farther than my thoughts, and I’m always with them, and they are always with you. Even if my thoughts go to sleep, your painting will wake up my heart and delight both heart and eyes.

I used to be so careful when I’d travel to secure all my trivial possessions with the most reliable locks available so criminals wouldn’t tamper with them. But you, so much more precious than my jewels and my greatest comfort, have become my greatest sadness and worry, because you’re vulnerable to any common thief. I haven’t locked you up in any chest, other than in my own chest, where my heart is, and you’re not really there, even though I feel that you are. You can come and go from my heart as you please, and I’m afraid you’ll be stolen from there, because even an honest man would turn thief to get such a rich prize.

In anticipation of the time, if it ever comes, when I will see you frown at my defects; when mature reflection tells you that you’ve come to the end of your love for me; in anticipation of that time when you will pass by me like a stranger, barely even acknowledging me with a glance of your brilliant eye; when your love for me isn’t love anymore and you’re guided only by somber judgment—in anticipation of that time, I’m establishing myself here, knowing how little I really deserve, and I’m giving testimony against myself to defend the justice of your future actions. You have every right to leave poor me—all the laws of reason back you up—since I can’t offer any justification for your loving me.

I feel very depressed as I go on my journey, because I know when I get where I’m going I’ll have time and leisure to rest, and when I have that time to rest I’ll have nothing to think about except “I’m this many miles away from my friend.” The horse that carries me, affected by my sadness, plods slowly on, bearing the weight of my emotions, as if by some instinct the poor creature knew that I didn’t want to move quickly away from you. I can’t provoke him to go any faster with the bloody spur that I sometimes thrust into his hide in anger. He only answers me with a groan, which hurts me more than my spur hurts him, because it reminds me that my grief lies ahead of me and all my joy is behind me.

(Continuing from Sonnet 50) This is how my love for you excuses my horse’s slow plod as I journey away from you: “Why should I hurry away from you?” Until I return, there’s no need to rush. But what excuse will my poor horse have for his slowness then, when even the most extreme swiftness will seem slow to me? On the return journey I’d use my spurs even if the animal rode like the wind. Even if my horse had wings I’d feel like we were standing still. No horse could keep up with my desire then. My desire, made of the most perfect love, will race toward you like a horse made of fire, not neigh like a slow, dull horse made of flesh and blood. But, my love, out of love I’ll excuse my horse like this: Since he deliberately went slowly as he was leaving you, I’ll run back to you and forget about the horse altogether.

I’m like a rich man who has the key to a great treasure chest, but who resists opening it every hour, because he doesn’t want to spoil his pleasure by getting too used to the treasure. That’s why holiday feasts are so infrequent: Spaced out across the year, they’re like precious jewels placed evenly across a crown. In the same way, the time that keeps us apart is my treasure chest, or it’s like a closet that hides a beautiful robe— the closet makes a special occasion even more special when it is opened to reveal its hidden splendor. You are blessed with such great worth that those who are with you feel triumphant, and those who are not with you hope to be.

What is your true essence, what are you made of, that there should be millions of reflections of you? Every person has only one image, but you, though you’re only one person, lend something to everyone else’s image. If an artist tries to depict Adonis, he’ll wind up creating an inferior imitation of you. If he were to paint Helen as beautifully as possible, he would again wind up with a picture of you, decked out in Greek costume. Praise the spring and the abundant harvest season—but the spring is only a faint shadow of your beauty, and the fall a faint imitation of your abundance. We recognize you in every blessed sight that we see. You are part of every beautiful thing, but you’re not like any of them—you’re incomparable—in the constancy of your heart.

Beauty seems so much more beautiful when it comes with honesty and integrity. Roses are beautiful, but we think they’re even more so because of their sweet scent. Wildflowers have as deep a color as fragrant roses; their thorns are the same, and their beauty broadcasts just as loudly when summer opens their buds. But because their only virtue is their looks, no one wants or respects them and they die unnoticed and alone. Sweet roses don’t suffer that fate. When they die, the most fragrant perfumes are made from their corpses. The same is true of you, beautiful youth. When you fade away, my poems will preserve your essence.

Neither marble nor the gold-plated monuments of princes will outlive this powerful poetry. You will shine more brightly in these poems than those stones that crumble to dust, blackened by time. When devastating war overturns statues, with its battles uprooting buildings, neither the god of war nor his quick-burning fires shall destroy this record of you. Despite death and ignorant enmity, you shall continue on. All those generations to come, down to the weary end of time, will devote space to praising you. So until Judgment Day, when you are raised up, you will live in this poetry, and in the eyes of lovers who read this.

Sweet love, be as strong as you used to be. Don’t let people say that love is less keen and persistent than lust, which may be satiated today but then comes back tomorrow just as strong and sharp as ever. That’s how you should be, love. Although today you see so much of your love that you want to shut your eyes, look again tomorrow: Do not kill your affection by making yourself perpetually dull and lethargic. Let this sad period of separation be like an ocean that lies between two opposite shores; two newly betrothed lovers come every day to the opposite banks hoping to see each other, and when they do, the sight feels especially blessed. Or call this time winter, which, being full of misery, makes us wish for summer three times more than if it didn’t feel so rare.

Since I’m your slave, what else should I do but wait on the hours, and for the times when you’ll want me? I don’t have any valuable time to spend, or any services to do, until you need me. Nor do I dare complain about how agonizingly long the hours are while I watch the clock for you, my king, or how bitter your absence is after you’ve said goodbye to your servant. Nor do I dare ask jealous questions about where you might be, or speculate about your affairs, but like a sad slave I sit still and think about nothing except how happy you’re making whomever you’re with. Love makes a person such a faithful fool that no matter what you do to satisfy your desires, he doesn’t think you’ve done anything wrong.

(Continuing from Sonnet 57) Whatever god decided to make me your slave, may he never allow me to so much as think about having any control over when you see me, or asking you to account for how you’ve been passing the hours. I’m your slave, after all, and forced to wait until you have time for me. Oh, while I wait for your summons, let me suffer patiently the prison of this lengthy absence from you as you do whatever you want. And let me control my impatience and quietly endure each disappointment without accusing you of hurting me. Go wherever you want—you’re so privileged that you may decide to do whatever you like. You have the right to pardon yourself for any crime you commit. And I have to wait, even if it feels like hell, and not blame you for following your desire, whether it’s for good or bad.

If it’s true that there’s nothing new and everything that now exists existed in the past, then we are really fooling ourselves when we struggle to write something new, winding up, after much exhausting, painful labor, with a tired imitation of an imitation! If only I could look back into the records, even as far as five hundred years ago, and find a description of you in some old book, written when people were just beginning to put their thoughts in writing, so I could see what the old world would say about your amazingly beautiful body. Then I could see whether we’ve gotten better at writing or worse, or whether things have stayed the same as the world revolves. Oh, I’m sure the witty writers of the past have devoted praise and admiration to worse subjects than you.

As the waves move toward the pebbled shore, so do the minutes we have to live hasten toward their end, each moment changing place with the one before, striving to move forward with successive efforts. Everything that has been born, though it once swam in that broad ocean of light that exists before birth, crawls its way up the shores of maturity, where it faces cruel obstacles to its glory. Time, which gives everything, now destroys its own gift. Time pierces the beauty of youth, drawing wrinkles in beauty’s forehead. Time devours the choicest specimens of nature; nothing exists that it won’t mow down with its scythe. And yet my verses will last into the future, praising your worth despite Time’s cruel hand.

Was it your intention that I should stay awake all night thinking about you? Do you want my sleep to be interrupted while I’m tantalized by mental images of you? Are you sending your spirit far from its home to pry into my dealings, to find out the shameful things I’ve been up to in idle hours? Are you jealous? Oh, no: Though you love me a great deal, you don’t love me that much. It’s my love for you that’s keeping me awake. My own true love keeps me from sleeping—staying up worrying about you. I stay up for you, while you are awake somewhere else: far away from me, but all too close to certain other people.

The sin of self-love controls everything I see, and my entire soul, and every part of me. There’s no way to get rid of this sin, it’s so deeply rooted in my heart. I think that no one’s face is as gracious as mine, no body so evenly proportioned, no one’s integrity of such high worth. I calculate my value such that I surpass everybody else in everything. But when my mirror shows me how I really look, beaten and cracked by age and the sun, I come to an opposite conclusion: For myself to love myself so much would be a sinful error. It’s you I’m praising when I praise myself, ornamenting my old age with the beauty of your youth.

In anticipation of the time when my love shall be as I am now, crushed and worn out by time’s damaging hand; when time has sapped his vigor and filled his forehead with wrinkles; when his youthful morning has moved on to the difficult night of old age, and all of those forms of beauty that he now possesses are disappearing, or already gone, robbing him of the treasures of his youth—in anticipation of that time, I’m now defending myself against the cruel knife of time, ensuring that he never cuts from my memory the beauty of my sweet love, even if he takes my lover’s life. My lover’s beauty will remain visible in these black lines of poetry, and these lines shall survive, and he will live on in them, still young.

Now that I have seen time’s terrible hand deface the costly and splendid monuments of buried men from ages past, and once-lofty towers torn down; now that I have seen even hard brass subject to perpetual destruction by human beings; now that I have seen the hungry ocean swallow up the land and firm land seize territory from the ocean, so that each one’s loss is the other’s gain; now that I have seen that all things constantly change into something else or fall into decay—all this destruction has taught me to think: The time will come in which time will take my love from me. This thought feels like death, and makes me weep over what I have that I’m afraid of losing.

Since neither brass nor stone nor earth nor the limitless ocean is strong enough to resist the sad force of mortality, how can beauty possibly resist death’s rage when beauty is no stronger than a flower? How could your beauty, which is as fragile as the sweet breath of summer, hold out against the destructive assaults of time when neither invulnerable rocks nor gates of steel are strong enough to resist its decaying power? What a frightening thing to think about! Alas, where can I put your beauty, time’s most precious creation, to hide it from time itself? Whose hand is strong enough to slow time down? Who will forbid its destruction of your beauty? Oh, no one, unless this miracle proves effective: that in the black ink of my poetry, the one I love may still shine bright.

Because I’m tired of all of these things, I cry out for restful death: deserving people destined to be beggars, and worthless people dressed up in fancy clothes, and sacred vows broken, and rewards and honors shamefully bestowed on the wrong people, and chaste women turned into whores, and people perfectly in the right disgraced with slander, and the strong disabled by authorities who are weak, and artists silenced by authority, and fools controlling the wise like a doctor does the sick, and simple truth mistaken for simplemindedness, and good enslaved by evil. I’m tired of all these things and would like to escape them, except that if I die I’ll be leaving the person I love all alone.

(Continuing from Sonnet 66) Ah, why should the man I love have to live in the midst of all this corruption, gracing sinners with his presence so they can take advantage of their association with him? Why should portrait painters and makeup artists be allowed to imitate his face, making lifeless copies of his vibrant beauty? Why should those less beautiful than he imitate roses by false means, when he is a true rose? And why should he live, now that Nature has degenerated so much that she can hardly infuse anyone with vigor and beauty? Because she has no fund of beauty now except him and, having so many children to provide for, needs to borrow from his store. Oh, Nature keeps him alive in order to show the wealth of beauty she had long ago, before these recent bad days came.

(Continuing from Sonnet 67) So his face is the incarnation of how things were in the old days, when beautiful people lived and died as commonly as flowers—before these illegitimate signs of beauty were created, or anyone dared to put them on a living human being. That was before the golden locks of corpses, which belong in graves, were cut off and made to live a second life on a second person’s head. It was before the hair of a beautiful corpse served to make another person happy. You can see the old-fashioned youthful beauty of his face: no wig to ornament it, the real thing in all its honesty, not borrowing someone else’s youth nor stealing from the old to look new again. Nature preserves him as a map, to show cosmetics what beauty used to be.

Those parts of you that are visible to the world lack nothing, and no one could imagine improving them. Everybody admits this unreservedly, though they’re only saying what’s obviously true—what even your enemies praise you for. Thus, your outside is rewarded with public praise. But the same people who give you the praise your beauty deserves take quite another tack once they’ve looked beyond the surface. These people examine the beauty of your mind and character, and they guess at what’s in there by observing your actions. Then, though they judged your appearance kindly, their harsh thoughts tell them that although you appear beautiful you smell corrupt. So, if you don’t smell as good as you look, this is the reason: You’re hanging out with lowlifes.

The fact that people say bad things about you won’t be held against you, because beautiful people have always been the target of slander. Beautiful people are always the objects of suspicion, a black crow darkening heaven. As long as you’re good, you’re a target of temptation; slander just proves how worthy you are. For vice, like a worm, loves to devour the sweetest buds the most, which makes you—in your prime, pure and unstained—a perfect target. You’ve escaped the traps that usually endanger young men, because either no one tempted you or you resisted the temptation. However, this praise I’ve given you won’t inflate your reputation so much that it keeps envious people from talking, because they always will. If your beauty weren’t masked by at least some suspicion of evil, you’d be the most beloved person in the world.

When I am dead, mourn for me only as long as you hear the funeral bell telling the world that I’ve left this vile world to go live with the vile worms. No, if you read this line, don’t remember who wrote it, because I love you so much that I’d rather you forgot me than thought about me and became sad. I’m telling you, if you look at this poem when I’m, say, dissolved in the earth, don’t so much as utter my name but let your love die with me. Otherwise, the world, in all its wisdom, will investigate why you’re sad and use me to mock you, now that I am gone.

(Continuing from Sonnet 71) Oh, in case the world challenges you to recite what merit I possessed that would justify your loving me, forget about me entirely after I die, dear love. For you won’t find anything worthy to say about me unless you make up some generous lie, which makes me sound better than I deserve, and attach more praise to my dead self than accords with the stingy truth. Oh, to prevent your true love from becoming false, as it will, in part, if you make false statements out of love for me, let my name be buried with my corpse and no longer bring shame to you or me. For I’m ashamed of what I produce, and you should be, too, to love such worthless things.

When you look at me, you can see an image of those times of year when the leaves are yellow or have fallen, or when the trees have no leaves at all and the bare branches where the sweet birds recently sang shiver in anticipation of the cold. In me you can see the twilight that remains after the sunset fades in the west, which by and by is replaced by black night, the twin of death, which closes up everyone in eternal rest. In me you can see the remains of a fire still glowing atop the ashes of its early stages, as if it lay on its own deathbed, on which it has to burn out, consuming what used to fuel it. You see all these things, and they make your love stronger, because you love even more what you know you’ll lose before long.

(Continuing from Sonnet 73) But don’t be upset when death arrives to carry me off where no one can release me. My life will continue to some extent in these lines, which you’ll always have to remember me by. When you reread this, you’ll be seeing again the precise part of me that was dedicated to you. The earth can only have the earthly part of me, which is what belongs to it. My spirit, the better part of me, is yours. So when I’m dead you’ll have only my body—the dregs of my life, the part that worms eat, the only part of me that cowardly, wretched death could kill, the part that’s too worthless for you to remember. What gives my body its worth is the spirit it contains, and that spirit is this poem, and this poem will remain with you.

I need you the way living things need food or the grass needs rain, and to attain the peace that only you can give me, I fight with myself the way a miser struggles with his wealth. One moment he enjoys his wealth proudly, and the next he’s worried that someone from these thieving times will steal his treasure. One moment I think it’s best to be alone with you, but then I think it would be better if the rest of the world could see my pleasure. At times I feel oversatisfied from looking at you excessively, but a little later I’m starving to get a look at you. I can’t experience or pursue any enjoyment except what you can give me or I can take from you. That’s why I suffer and feel hungry day after day, because I either get too much of you or none at all.

Why is my poetry so lacking in new ornaments, so determined in avoiding variation and change? Why don’t I, like everyone else these days, take a look at the new literary styles and weird combinations of other writers? Why do I always write the same thing, always the same, and always in the same distinctive style, so that almost every word I write tells you who wrote it, where it was born, and where it comes from? Oh, you should know, sweet love, I always write about you, and you and love are continually my subjects. So the best I can do is find new words to say the same thing, spending again what I’ve already spent: Just as the sun is new and old every day, my love for you keeps making me tell what I’ve already told.

Your mirror will show you how your beauty is wearing away; your clock how your precious minutes are slipping away; the pages of this blank notebook will record your thoughts; and you may learn the following things from those thoughts: The wrinkles that your mirror will show you will remind you of open graves. By the hands of your clock, you’ll learn how time keeps stealing away to eternity. Write down whatever you can’t remember on these blank pages, and later, when you encounter those thoughts again, the children of your brain, they’ll have grown up, nourished by your continued reflection. They’ll be like a new acquaintance. Doing these things often—looking in the mirror and at the clock, and writing in the book—will benefit you and greatly enrich your book.

I have cited you as my source of inspiration so often, and you’ve helped my poetry so much, that every other writer has adopted my habit of addressing poems to you, and now they all write their poetry in your name. Your beautiful eyes are such a source of inspiration that they’ve helped the mute sing high notes, raised the ignorant to new heights of intelligence, helped the educated soar even higher, and enhanced the gracefulness of the graceful. Yet your greatest pride should be in my accomplishment, because it’s done under your influence and inspired by you. With other writers, you only improve their style, adding an extra sheen to the skill they already have. But without you I have no skill at all; you lift up my utter ignorance so that I am well-educated.

When I was the only writer who looked to you for inspiration, only my poetry received all of the benefits of your noble grace. But now the poems I write under your inspiration have gotten worse, and I’m forced to make room for someone else. I admit, my sweet love, that such a lovely subject as you deserves to have a better writer working for you. But whatever your new poet says about you, he’s only stealing the ideas from you and giving them back to you. He says you’re virtuous, but he only learned that word from watching your behavior. He says you’re beautiful, but he only found out about beauty from your face. He has no praise to give you except for what he finds in you already. So don’t thank him for what he says about you, since you’re paying for everything he gives you.

I get very discouraged when I write about you, knowing that a superior writer is writing about you too. He uses all of his powers of praise to make me tongue-tied when I write about your glory. But since your worth is as big as the ocean, able to support the smallest boat as well as the biggest ship, my impudent little boat, which is far inferior to his, stubbornly makes an appearance on your waters. Even at your shallowest, you keep me afloat, while he sails out over your measureless depths. And if I wind up being wrecked, I’m only a worthless little vessel, whereas he’s a tall ship—something to be proud of. So if he does well and I find myself shipwrecked and discarded, the worst I can say is this: I was destroyed because of my love for you.

Either I will live to write your epitaph after you die, or you will survive me when I’m rotting in the grave. Death cannot take away your memory, but it will cause everything to do with me to be forgotten. Your name will live eternally, but once I’m gone, I’ll be dead to the world. I’ll only be granted an ordinary grave, but your tomb will be where everyone can see it. Your monument will be these tender poems of mine, which future generations will read and talk about, when everyone who’s now living is dead. My pen has such power that you’ll not only stay alive, you’ll live where the essence of life resides: in the breath and voices of men.

I admit that you weren’t married to my poetry, so you’re not doing anything wrong if you read what other writers say about you in the books they dedicate to you—you, the beautiful subject that blesses their books. You are as knowledgeable as you are beautiful, and you see that I’m incapable of praising you sufficiently, so you’re forced to look again for some newer, fresher writer in these days of literary improvements. Go ahead and do so, my love. Yet while these writers have invented whatever elaborate stylistic devices they can borrow from rhetoric, you would be more truthfully represented, since you’re truly beautiful, by the true, plain words of your truth-telling friend. And the overblown praise of these other writers might be more appropriately applied to people who need to be beautified. For you, such rhetorical excess is misused.

It never seemed to me that you needed to be praised, so I never described your beauty with profuse or elaborate rhetoric. I could see (or I thought I could see) that you were better than any praise a poet could give you. Therefore, I haven’t exerted myself to describe you, so that you yourself, since you’re still alive, could show everybody how much more worthy you are than my commonplace writing style can describe. You decided that this silence on my part was a fault, but I’m particularly proud of my muteness. By remaining silent, at least I don’t damage your beauty, whereas other writers try to bring you to life in their writing, and kill you instead. You possess more life in one of your beautiful eyes than all of your poets could invent by praising you.

Which writer says the most about you? Which of them can say anything more to praise you than that only you are you, and that all beauty is stored in you, so that there’s nothing to compare you to but yourself? Only a very poor writer is unable to improve the subject he’s writing about at least a little, but whoever writes about you will have given his writing dignity simply by reporting that you are you. If that writer simply describes you accurately, managing not to mess up what nature made so perfectly, he’ll have created such an image that his writing skills will become famous, his style admired everywhere. For all of the beauty you’re blessed with, you curse yourself by loving to hear yourself praised so much, because then people write worse praise trying to flatter you.

My mute poetry politely remains silent, while commentaries praising you pile up, capturing the essence of your character in golden words and precious phrases inspired by all the muses. I think good thoughts about you while other people write good words, and like an illiterate parish clerk I continually cry “amen” to every poem of praise that capable poets produce about you in their polished and refined style. When I hear you praised, I say, “That’s right, that’s true,” and add a little something to their utmost praise of you. What I add is only in my own mind, but in my own mind I know I love you the most, though I speak the least. So respect others for the words of praise they offer you, but respect me for my silent thoughts, which express themselves only in actions.

Was it the ambitious and impressive poem that my rival wrote for you that discouraged me from writing my own poem, killing my thoughts before I could put them into words? Was it his creative power, aided by the spirits of all the dead authors he’s read so that he writes better than any mortal should, that stunned me into silence? No, it was neither him nor those friends of his who visit him at night and help him, who silenced me with amazement. Neither he nor that friendly little ghost that tricks him with false information each night can boast that they’re responsible for my silence. I wasn’t sick because of any fear of them. But when you looked favorably on his writing and thus made it even better, then I suddenly had nothing to say, and you made my writing feeble.

Goodbye; you’re too valuable for me to hold onto, and you probably know exactly what you’re worth. Your high value gives you the right to leave me; you have severed the ties that bind me to you. For what hold do I have over you except the hold that you choose to give me, and how do I deserve such a treasure? There’s nothing in me to justify such a beautiful gift, so my right to possess you is reverting back to you. When you gave yourself to me, you didn’t know your own worth, or else you were mistaken about me, the person you gave yourself to. So the great gift you gave me, being based on a false estimate, goes back to you now that you’re able to make a better judgment. Thus, the time in which I had you was like a flattering dream; while I was asleep, I thought I was a king, but when I woke up, I found that was not the case.

When you feel inclined to think little of me and make other people scorn me, I’ll take your side and argue against myself, demonstrating that you’re virtuous even while you’re lying about me. Since I know my own weaknesses better than anyone, I can tell a story about my hidden faults (in which I reveal myself as morally tainted) that will have people thinking better of you for not being with me anymore. And I, too, will gain by turning all my loving thoughts to you: Whatever injuries I do to myself will help you, which will help me doubly. I love you so much—belong to you so totally—that to get you everything you’re entitled to, I will take every wrong upon myself.

(Continuing from Sonnet 88) If you tell people you left me because of some fault of mine, I will expand upon whatever you say I did wrong. Say I’m lame, and I’ll start limping immediately, without trying to defend myself against your accusations. My love, in finding a reason to justify leaving me, you can’t disgrace me half as badly as I’ll disgrace myself, as soon as I know what you want. I’ll pretend I don’t know you and act like a stranger. I won’t go where I might run into you. And I won’t mention your beloved name anymore in case I’d dirty it by reminding people that we used to be acquainted. For your sake, I’ll vow to be my own enemy, because I must not love someone whom you hate.

(Continuing from Sonnet 89) So hate me when you want to, but if you’re ever going to, do it now, now while the world is determined to frustrate everything I try to do. Add to my misfortune, make me collapse under it, don’t hit me with this later, after I’ve already endured so many other blows. Ah, do not let me think I’ve avoided the sorrow of losing you, then come and reject me—right after I’ve been defeated by another grief. Don’t turn my windy night into a rainy tomorrow, prolonging the defeat you intend to give me. If you’re going to leave me, don’t wait until the end, after other little sorrows have done their damage. Leave me at the beginning, so I experience the worst misfortune first. Then other hurtful things, which seem painful now, won’t seem so, compared with losing you.

Some people are proud of the social status they’ve inherited; some people of their abilities; some of their wealth; some of how strong they are; some of their clothes, though the clothes are trendy and weird; some are proud of their hawks and hounds; some of their horses; and every individual temperament has its particular pleasure, something the person enjoys above everything else. But I don’t measure happiness by any of these things. There’s something else that’s better than them all. To me, your love is better than high social status, more valuable than wealth, more worth being proud of than expensive clothes, and more enjoyable than hawks or horses. And having you, I have something better than what other men are proud of—except I’m wretched in this one respect: You can take all this away from me and make me completely wretched.

(Continuing from Sonnet 91) But go ahead and leave me—do your best to hurt me. I’m sure to have you as long as I’m alive, because I will only be alive as long as you love me: My life depends on your love. Now I don’t have to worry about all the terrible things you might do to hurt me; as soon as you hurt me even a little, I’ll die. I realize now that I’m in a better position than I would be if I were dependent on your affections. You can’t worry me with the idea that you’re fickle, since my life would be over as soon as you changed your mind about me. Oh, what a happy position I’m in: I’m happy to have your love, but also happy to die! But what situation is so perfectly blessed that it breeds no worries? You might be unfaithful to me without my knowing it.

(Continuing from Sonnet 92) In that case, I’ll live like a deceived husband, assuming you’re faithful. Then your face will still show that you love me, even though you don’t—your looks will stay the same, but your heart will be somewhere else. As your face could never have a hateful expression, I couldn’t ever know a change of heart from looking at it. Many people express their unfaithfulness in their faces—in moody looks and frowns and strange wrinkles. But when heaven created you, it decided that your face would always express sweet love. Whatever your thoughts or desires, your looks never express anything but sweetness. In fact, your beauty becomes much like Eve’s apple when you’re not as sweet and virtuous as you look.

Those whose beauty gives them the power to hurt others, but who refuse to; those who look very sexy but won’t have sex; who attract other people but are themselves like stones—cold, unemotional, and difficult to tempt—those are the ones who will rightly inherit heaven’s blessings and keep nature’s treasures from being wasted. Those who have self-control truly own their beauty; the rest are only administering their beauty for others’ use. The summer flower seems sweet to us in summer, though the flower itself may feel that it’s only living and dying. But if that flower lets itself be infected by a parasite, the lowest weed will be better, for the sweetest things have the capacity to turn the sourest by acting wrongly. Lilies that rot smell a lot worse than weeds.

You make the flaw that’s ruining your reputation (like a worm infecting a rosebud) look so sweet and lovely. Oh, you cover up your sins with such a sweet exterior! The person who accuses you of wild lust somehow manages to turn his criticisms into praise: Your name makes bad actions look good. Oh, the vices you have inside you live in a beautiful house. Your beauty serves as a veil that makes every bad thing you do seem good! But be careful, dear heart, with this great privilege that your beauty gives you. If you abuse it, it will stop working, like a knife that loses its edge from misuse.

Some say your fault is your youth, others that the problem is your lustfulness. Some say your youth and playfulness are charming. Both important and unimportant people love your charms and your faults too. You turn your faults into sources of charm. Just as a worthless jewel is regarded as valuable when a queen is wearing it, so the sins that people see you commit are turned into good characteristics and regarded as good. How many lambs could the grim wolf trick if he could make himself look like a lamb? How many people might you lead astray if you seduced them with the full force of your beauty and social position? But don’t do that. I love you so much (since you are mine) that your reputation extends to me as well.

My separation from you has felt just like winter, since you’re what makes the year pleasurable! I’ve felt very cold, and the days have seemed very dark, and everything has been as barren as in December! And yet the time we’ve been apart was actually summer, then fall, the harvest-time when nature gives birth to crops planted in the springlike a woman giving birth after her husband has died. And these abundant fruits of nature seemed like hopeless orphans to me, because summer and summer’s pleasures all depend on you, and, with you away, even the birds are silent. Or if they sing, they do it so dismally that the leaves grow pale with fear, dreading the fact that winter’s almost here.

I was away from you during the spring, when splendid April in all its finery made everything feel so young that even Saturn, the god of old age and gloominess, laughed and leaped along with it. But neither the songs of birds nor the sweet smell of all the various flowers could make me feel like it was summer or inspire me to go flower picking. I wasn’t amazed by how white the lily was, nor did I praise the deep red of the roses. They were only sweet, only pictures of delight, drawn in imitation of you, the archetype of spring. It seemed like it was still winter and, with you away, I played with these flowers as if I were playing with your reflection.

(Continuing from Sonnet 98) This is how I scolded the presumptuous violet: “Sweet thief, where did you steal your sweet smell from if not from my beloved’s breath? You obviously got that purple color you’re so proud of by dying yourself in his blood.” I condemned the lily for stealing its whiteness from your hand and the marjoram buds for stealing your curly hair. The roses stood by anxiously, the red one blushing in shame, the white one pale with despair, knowing they were guilty of stealing your colors too. A third rose, neither red nor white, had stolen both red and white from your complexion, and added to his robbery the smell of your breath. But as punishment for his theft, a vengeful worm destroyed the rose just at its proudest growth. I noticed other flowers, and I couldn’t see any that hadn’t stolen its sweetness or color from you.

Where have you been, Muse, that you have forgotten for so long to inspire me to write about the person who gives you all your power? Are you using up your inspiration on some worthless poem, eclipsing your true powers by making unworthy topics seem brighter? Return, forgetful Muse, and make up for the time you’ve wasted by inspiring me to write some gentle verses. Inspire poems addressed to my beloved, the person who actually likes your songs, and who gives you both poetic skill and a topic to write about. Get up, sleepy Muse: Examine my beloved’s sweet face to see if time has engraved any wrinkles on it. If there are any, then satirize aging and make everybody despise time’s destructive powers. Make my beloved famous faster than time can destroy his life; prevent time’s knife from cutting my beloved down.

(Continuing from Sonnet 100) Oh truant Muse, how are you going to make amends for neglecting my beloved, the embodiment of truth bound up with beauty? Both truth and beauty depend upon my beloved. You depend on, and are dignified by, him too. Answer me, Muse; perhaps you’ll say, “Truth doesn’t need to be embellished when it’s already attached to beauty. Beauty doesn’t need to be poetically described in order for its truth to be apparent. Whatever is best is best when it’s not mixed with anything else.” But just because my beloved needs no praise, will you be silent? You can’t excuse this silence, as you have the ability to make him live longer than a golden tomb and win the praise of future ages. Then do your job, Muse. I’ll teach you how to make him look in the distant future like he does now.

My love is stronger, though it seems weaker. I don’t love less, but I show my love less. When a person broadcasts how he loves and how richly he esteems the person he loves, he turns his love into a commodity. Our love was still new when I used to write poems about it, just as the nightingale sings at the beginning of summer, then stops singing as the summer progresses. It’s not that summer is less pleasant now than the nights when the nightingale sang. It’s just that every tree branch is filled with songbirds, and when things are common they’re less delightful. Therefore, like the nightingale, sometimes I keep silent because I don’t want to bore you with my song.

Alas, I’m a poor poet, since even with such a great subject to write about (you), the subject is worth more by itself than with my praise added to it. Don’t blame me if I can’t write anymore! Look in the mirror, and you’ll see a face that quite overwhelms my limited poetic skills, making my lines stupid and thereby disgracing me. It would be a sin, wouldn’t it, if in trying to improve my poetry, I messed up their subject, which was perfectly fine before? For the only things I write about are your charms and your wonderful qualities, and your own mirror will show you far, far more of these than I can possibly fit into my poetry.

You’ll never be old to me, beautiful friend, for your beauty seems just the same as it was when I first saw your lovely eyes. Since then, three cold winters have stripped the leaves off three proud summers; three beautiful springs have turned to three yellow autumns, all in the course of the seasons. Three Aprils, full of perfumed flowers, have all burned up into three hot Junes since the first day I saw you in your freshness—and you’re still fresh and green. Ah, but beauty, like the hand of a clock, creeps away from the person it’s attached to so slowly no one can see it. In the same way, your sweet beauty, which seems to be standing still, is actually changing, and my eye may be deceived. In case it is, hear this, future generations: Before you were born, the greatest example of beauty was already dead.

Let no one call my love idolatryor say that I treat my beloved as an idol, since all of my poems and praises have been addressed to one person, are about one person, and always will be. My love is kind today, will be kind tomorrow, always constant in wondrous excellence. Therefore, since my poetry is confined to a subject that’s always the same, it always expresses the same thing, never including anything different. The subject of my poems is the beautiful, kind, and faithful. I write about the beautiful, kind, and faithful in various ways, and this is the task that I expend all of my creativity on—three themes rolled up in one person, which offers an amazing scope for poetic invention. Beauty, kindness, and fidelity have often been divided into different people, but the three of them were never together in one person until now.

When in accounts of historic times I come upon descriptions of very beautiful people and read the beautiful poems inspired by them, in praise of ladies now dead and lovely knights; when I see the poems catalog their beauty—their hands, feet, lips, eyes, foreheads—I realize that these ancient writers were trying to describe the same kind of beauty that you possess now. So all the praises of these writers are actually prophecies of our time; all of them prefigure you. If the writers hadn’t been divinely inspired with this gift of prophecy, they wouldn’t have had the skill to describe your worth. Those of us who live now may be able to see your beauty firsthand and be amazed by it, but we lack the poetic skill to describe it.

Neither my own fears nor the speculations of the rest of the world about the future can continue to keep me from possessing my beloved, who everybody thought was doomed to remain in prison. The moon, which was always mortal, has finally been eclipsed, and the gloomy fortune-tellers now laugh at their own predictions. Things that once seemed doubtful have become certainties, and peace has come to stay. Now, with the blessings of these times, my beloved looks fresh again and death itself submits to me, since in spite of death I’ll live on in this poor poem while death only exults over the stupid and illiterate peoples that he’s overcome. And you will find this poem to be your monument when tyrants reach the end of their reigns and tombs of brass fall into decay.

What could I possibly write that I haven’t written already to show you how constant and faithful my soul is? What else is there to say, what new thing can I invent, that would express either my love or your value? There’s nothing, sweet boy. And yet, just as with prayers to God, I have to keep saying the same thing over and over again each day, without thinking that these old praises are old. You’re mine, I’m yours, just like when I first honored your name in writing. My love for you, which is everlasting, doesn’t care about the effects of age, nor does it acknowledge your wrinkles, but always inspires me to describe my feelings as if they were still young. I see in you the original source of my love for you, even though your age and appearance would suggest that the reason for that love is dead.

Oh, never say that I was unfaithful to you in my heart, even though my absence from you suggested that my love had weakened. I can’t separate myself from my feelings for you anymore than I can separate myself from myself. You are my home, and if I strayed away from you, like a traveler I have returned again, right at the appointed time, with my feelings unchanged, so I’m making up for my misdeed. Even though I have the same weaknesses in my nature as everyone made of flesh and blood, don’t ever believe that I could be so morally compromised as to leave someone as good as you in exchange for something worthless. The entire universe except for you, my love, means nothing to me. You’re everything to me.

Alas, it’s true, I have gone here and there, and made myself look foolish, and allowed my thoughts to be divided, and acted as if the most valuable thing were worthless, and used my new friends to commit the old infidelities I’ve committed before. It’s very true that I’ve treated true love strangely and with disdain. But I swear by heaven, these moments when I’ve swerved aside have made my heart young again, and by trying out other people I’ve proved to myself that you’re the best person I love. Now I’ve finished with everything except for our love, which will have no end. I will no longer whet my appetite for new lovers, causing suffering to my old friend, the god of love to whom I’m now limiting myself. So welcome me back into your pure and loving heart; to me, you’re the next best thing to heaven.

I know you curse my bad luck for having no better way to make a living than in front of the public, which has had a bad effect on my morals and behavior. This is why I have a bad name, and coming into contact with the public so much has polluted my very nature, just like a cloth-dyer’s hand becomes stained with his dye. So take pity on me and hope that I can go back to being the way I would have been if I hadn’t been contaminated by the public; meanwhile, I’ll drink bitter medicines made of vinegar to cure myself of this infection. I won’t think that the medicine’s bitter no matter how bitter it is, nor will I protest at having to do double penance to try to undo the bad influence. So pity me, dear friend, and I assure you: Your pity alone is enough to cure me.

(Continuing from Sonnet 111) Your love and pity make up for the damage popular opinion has done to my reputation, since what do I care who calls me good or bad as long as you gloss over what’s bad about me and acknowledge my good? You’re the entire world to me, and I have to strive to learn what’s good or bad about me from what you say. No one else matters to me, and I matter to no one else alive. Your opinion is so powerful with me that it determines what’s right and wrong. I care so little about what other people say that it’s as if I threw their voices into a bottomless pit—that’s how deaf I am to their flattery and criticism. Notice how I disregard the fact that the rest of the world neglects me. You matter so much to me that you’re dead to the rest of the world.

Since I left you, I’m so absorbed in my own thoughts that I partly see where I’m going and partly don’t. For my vision doesn’t focus on the shapes of birds or flowers or anything else it lands on. My mind simply isn’t on the living things that my eyes show it, nor do I remember the things I see. For whether I see the rudest or gentlest sight, the sweetest-looking or the most deformed creature, the mountain or the sea, the day or the night, the crow or the dove, my vision shapes them so they look like you. Incapable of seeing anything else and filled with your image, my faithfulness to you is making me see everything wrongly.

(Continuing from Sonnet 113) Is it the case that my mind, flattered by your love, has become susceptible to pleasurable delusions? Or is it the case that my eyes are seeing accurately, and my love for you has given me magical powers to turn monsters and shapeless things into angels that look like your sweet self, transforming every bad sight into the best and most perfect thing as fast as it comes into my field of vision? Oh, the first is true: My eyes are deluded, and my mind accepts these delusions like a king accepts flattery. My eye knows perfectly well what I like to see, and it shows me what it knows I’ll enjoy. Though its visions are poisoned by falsehood, my eye can be partially excused by the fact that it likes these false visions too and consumes them first, like a servant who tastes the king’s food to see if it’s poisoned.

I lied in those poems I wrote before where I said I couldn’t love you any more than I did already. Back then I had no reason to think that my love, which was already burning intensely, could burn any brighter. Instead, I was depending on the fact that the passage of time—together with the millions of unexpected events that can come between lovers’ promises and change even the decrees of kings—might darken a lover’s sacred beauty, take the edge off of a lover’s keenest intentions, and force the strongest minds to adapt to changing circumstances. Alas, why didn’t I say back then, when I was worried about time’s destructive power, “I love you best now”? I was so certain of my feelings despite the uncertainty, and I was ready to say my present happiness was complete, though I had doubts about everything to come. Love itself is a baby, so wouldn’t it have been natural for me to have said that my love for you was fully grown, though it keeps growing?

I hope I may never acknowledge any reason why minds that truly love each other shouldn’t be joined together. Love isn’t really love if it changes when it sees the beloved change or if it disappears when the beloved leaves. Oh no, love is a constant and unchanging light that shines on storms without being shaken; it is the star that guides every wandering boat. And like a star, its value is beyond measure, though its height can be measured. Love is not under time’s power, though time has the power to destroy rosy lips and cheeks. Love does not alter with the passage of brief hours and weeks, but lasts until Doomsday. If I’m wrong about this and can be proven wrong, I never wrote, and no man ever loved.

Accuse me like this: Say that I’ve neglected every opportunity to repay the great obligation I owe you; that I’ve forgotten to invoke your precious love, though every day I’m more and more bound to you. Say that I’ve spent too much time with strangers, giving away the time that you have a right to spend with me. Say that I’ve let every wind blow me as far away as possible from you. Write a list of all the stubborn and wrong things I’ve done, and put together a lot of speculations about my other misdeeds based on what you already know. Get ready to frown at me, but don’t frown at me because of what I’ve done to awaken new hatred in you, since I did it all to test the constancy and strength of your love.

Just as we like to sharpen our appetites by eating pungent combinations of food or make ourselves vomit in order to ward off future illness, so, in the same way, because I was so full of your sweetness (not that it’s ever cloying), I decided to switch from you to a more bitter diet. And because I was tired of being so healthy, I decided it would be good to make myself sick, using other people to keep from getting sick of you. With this wise relationship strategy, which I adopted in anticipation of problems that didn’t exist, I actually became used to cheating on you. I applied medicine to a relationship that was healthy to begin with, attempting to cure something totally good by applying evil to it. But I learned from this—and I think what I learned is true—that the drugs I used are poisonous to me, since I’m so lovesick over you.

(Continuing from Sonnet 118) I’ve given myself medicines that seemed seductively sweet but in reality were foul as hell. I forced myself to doubt the things I was hopeful about and to be hopeful about what I should have worried about, always losing just when I expected myself to win! My heart committed wretched errors right at the moment when I thought I had never been more blessed! My eyes have popped out of their sockets in the delirium of this fever! But, oh, the benefits that evil brings! Now I see it’s true that good things can be made even better through evil, and that when you ruin love and then rebuild it, it grows more beautiful than it was at first, as well as stronger and greater. So, having been rebuked for my mistake, I return to the person who makes me happy, and because of my evil deeds I get back three times what I spent.

The fact that you were once cruel to me helps me now. Because of the sorrow that you made me feel then, I would have to be made of steel not to be bowed down to the ground with guilt over how I’ve hurt you. For if you’ve felt my unkindness to you the way I felt yours to me, you’ve endured a time in hell and I’ve acted like a cruel tyrant, never taking the time to think about how I once suffered when you committed the same crime against me. Oh, how I wish that your earlier sorrow had reminded me of how hard true sorrow hits, so that I would have apologized to you as fast as you apologized to me, giving you the medicine that an injured heart needs most! But your earlier offense against me can now compensate you for what I’ve just done. My offense cancels out yours, and yours must cancel out mine.

It’s better to be vile than to have people think you’re vile, especially when they accuse you of being vile and you’re really not, and then you don’t even get to enjoy doing the thing that people say is vile but that you don’t think is. For why should people who are corrupt themselves get to wink knowingly at my lustful inclinations? And why should people who are even weaker than I pry into my weaknesses, deciding that what I think is good is bad? No, I am what I am, and the people who accuse me are only revealing their own corruptions. Maybe I’m straight, and they’re the ones who are crooked; you can’t measure my actions by their foul thoughts, unless they’re willing to believe that all men are bad and thrive in their badness.

In my mind, I’ve already filled up the blank book you gave me with words that will remain in my memory longer than they would in that flimsy little book. In my memory, what I wrote about you will outlast any date, even to eternity. Or at least this record of you won’t be lost as long as my brain and heart survive—until each of them is forced to give up its part of you and pass into oblivion. That poor little notebook couldn’t hold as much as my memory can, and I have no need to keep notes to remember how much I love you. Therefore I was bold enough to give away your notebook, trusting in my own memory to keep a better record of you. For me to use an aid to remember you would imply that I’m forgetful.

No! Time, you’re not going to boast that I change. These new enormous buildings that are being erected don’t seem novel or strange to me at all—they’re just replicas of what’s existed before. Our lives are brief, and therefore we admire whatever is old, acting like it was made just for us rather than admitting we’ve heard it described before. I defy you and your records. I’m not interested in the present or the past, because both your records and the things we see around us lie. They are raised up and destroyed by your continual swift passage. I make this vow, and it shall always be true: I will be faithful despite you and your destructive power.

If my great love for you had simply been created by circumstances, it might be rejected as illegitimate because changing circumstances could destroy it. It would be subject to whatever’s in fashion at the moment, rejected with worthless things or plucked up with other fashionable flowers. No, my love was created where it can’t be touched by the unpredictability of events. It’s not helped by the approval of authority, nor is it crushed along with the malcontents who resist authority, as these times tempt us to do. My love isn’t afraid of the political scheming and conniving engaged in by immoral people, which only has a short term effect, but stands by itself, independent and enormously wise, neither growing during times of pleasure nor killed by misfortune. To attest to what I’m saying, I call as witnesses all those fools who died repentant and seeking goodness after living lives dedicated to crime.

Would it matter at all to me to carry the ceremonial canopy of a monarch in a procession, honoring the display of power with my appearance? Or would I think it worthwhile to lay the foundations of supposedly eternal monuments, which actually last only as long as decay or ruin permit? Haven’t I seen those who focus on appearances and covet the favors of the powerful lose everything, and more than everything, by spending too much on their obsessions? Such pitiful strivers give up simple pleasures for the sake of lavish meals, using up all their resources on their fickle desires. No, I shall be obedient and faithful to you only, and you shall accept my offering. It is simple but freely given, contains nothing second-rate, no unnecessary additions, only mutual surrender: myself for yourself. Get out of here, you paid spy: When a faithful person like I am is accused, someone like you has no power over them.

Oh, my lovely boy, you seem to have power over time itself, immune to its capacity to cut things down. You’ve only grown more beautiful as you’ve aged, revealing in the process how withered I, your lover, have become. If nature, which has power over destruction, has chosen to hold you back from decay, she’s doing so for this reason: to disgrace time and kill its effects. Yet in spite of this, you should fear her, though you’re nature’s best-loved pet. She can preserve you for a time, but she can’t keep you, her treasure, always. Nature will eventually be called to offer her accounts, and though she can delay this, she has to do it, and the way she’ll pay her debt to time is with you.

In the olden days, dark complexions weren’t considered attractive or, if they were, no one called them beautiful. But now darkness is officially accepted as beautiful, and the fair complexions that used to be called beautiful have gotten a bad reputation. For since everyone has seized the power to make themselves beautiful (which used to belong to nature), and ugly people can be beautiful by artificial means, no one can legitimately be called beautiful. Beauty has no special home but is commonplace or even lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress’ eyes are as black as a raven, well suited to today’s fashion, and in their blackness they seem to be lamenting those people who were born ugly but make themselves beautiful, giving beauty a bad name by faking it. But her black eyes lament so beautifully that everyone now says all beautiful eyes should look like hers.

Very often, when you (my greatest source of delight) play music by moving those wooden keys on the keyboard of the virginal with your sweet fingers, confusing my ear with the harmony of those plucked strings, I envy the keys. They leap up and kiss the tender underside of your hands, while my poor lips, who ought to be doing the kissing, stand by, blushing at the boldness of the keys. To be tickled like those keys are, my lips would gladly be transformed into wood and change places with the keys, over which your fingers gently walk, blessing the dead wood more than my living lips. Since the keys are so happy to touch your fingers, let them have the fingers, but give me your lips to kiss.

Sex is a way of squandering vital energy while incurring shame. In anticipation of sex, lust makes people murderous, violent, blameworthy, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, and untrustworthy. No sooner do people enjoy sex than they immediately despise it. They go to absurd lengths in its pursuit only to hate it out of all proportion once they’ve had it, insisting it was put in their path on purpose to make them crazy. They’re extreme when they’re pursuing sex, extreme when they’re having it, and extreme once they’ve had it. It’s blissful while you’re doing it and, once you’re done, a true sorrow. While you’re anticipating it, it seems like a joy; afterward, like a bad dream. The world knows all this very well, yet no one knows enough to avoid the heavenly experience that leads us to this hell.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. Coral is much redder than the red of her lips. Compared to the whiteness of snow, her breasts are grayish-brown. Poets describe their mistresses’ hair as gold wires, but my mistress has black wires growing on her head. I have seen roses that were a mixture of red and white, but I don’t see those colors in her cheeks. And some perfumes smell more delightful than my mistress’ reeking breath. I love to hear her speak; yet I know perfectly well that music has a far more pleasant sound. I admit I never saw a goddess walk; when my mistress walks, she treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my beloved is as special as any woman whom poets have lied about with false comparisons.

Even looking like you do, you’re as much of a tyrant as those women whose beauty makes them proud and cruel. For you know quite well that to me, who dotes on you, you’re the most beautiful and precious jewel. Yet some people say, in all honesty after looking at you, that your face simply does not have what it takes to make someone groan with love. I wouldn’t dare be so bold as to tell them they’re wrong, though to myself I swear they are. And to prove to myself that I’m right, I groan a thousand times just thinking about your face. These groans, coming one after the other, testify to the fact that your dark complexion is the most beautiful one to my eyes. There’s nothing black about you except your actions, and I think that’s the reason people spread this lie about your looks.

I love your eyes, and they seem to pity me, knowing I’m tormented by your disdain. In black, they look like mourners at a funeral, gazing at my pain with pretty compassion. And to tell the truth, the morning sun doesn’t look as good in the gray eastern sky, nor does the evening star look half as good in the western twilight, as those two mourning eyes look in your face. Oh, then I hope it would be just as beautiful for your heart to pity me, too, since mourning suits you so well, and for you to pity me with every other part of you to match. If you take pity on me, I’ll swear beauty itself is black, and everyone who doesn’t have your dark complexion is ugly.

Curse you for making me suffer by hurting both my friend and me. Isn’t it enough to torture me alone without making my friend your slave too? Because of your cruel attractions I’m no longer my own man, but my friend, who’s like my second self, you’ve enslaved even more cruelly. So I’ve been abandoned by him, by myself, and by you; being frustrated like this is a triple torment multiplied by three. Go ahead and keep me as your prisoner, but then let me use myself to bail out my friend. Whoever you assign to watch me while I’m in this jail, let me be in charge of guarding my friend—then you can’t torment me in my prison because I’ll have my friend to keep me happy. And yet you will torment me, because I belong to you, so everything that’s in me is yours, and since my friend is in my heart, he’s yours too.

(Continuing from Sonnet 133) So now I’ve admitted that he’s yours, and I’m legally bound to satisfy your desires too. I’ll give myself up to you if you’ll let go of my friend, so he can come back and comfort me. But you won’t let him go, and he doesn’t want to be free, because you’re greedy and he’s kind. He only became your slave because he was trying to bail me out, like someone co-signing a loan, but now he’s just as much under your power as I am. You’re going to insist on taking what your beauty entitles you to, you loan shark—you loan your body to everybody, and then you go after my friend, who only took you up on it for my sake. So I lose my friend because I allowed him to get tangled up with you. I’ve lost him; you have both him and me; he’s giving you all the sex you’re owed, but I’m still not free.

Other women may have their little desires, but you have your Will, and another Will as well, and more Will than you need. I, who am constantly pestering you for sex, am more than enough to satisfy you, adding another willing penis to the Will you already have. Since your sexual desires (and vagina) are both so enormous, won’t you agree just once to let me put my desire inside yours? Are you going to be attracted to everyone else’s will (penis), but reject mine? The sea is entirely made of water, but it still accepts additional water whenever it rains. So you, who already have a William, should in addition to your lover William accept my will (penis), making your sexual appetite (or vagina), which is already huge, even huger. Don’t kill an eager seducer by being unkind to him. Treat all your lovers as a single lover, and accept me (and my part) as part of that lover.

(Continuing from Sonnet 135) If it’s bothering your blind conscience that I keep pressing you for sex, just tell it that I’m Will, your lover—your conscience knows that Will is allowed in your bed. Out of charity, give in to my request at least that much. Will will fill your sweet love-treasure until it’s full. Yes, he’ll fill it full of penises, and mine will be one of them. With things that can hold a lot (like your vagina), it’s clear that one of anything is never enough. So among your vast number of lovers, let me be included without counting me. Consider me to be nothing, as long as you consider the nothing that I am to be sweet to you. Just love my name and love it always, and then you’ll love me, because my name is Will.

Love, you blind fool, what are you doing to my eyes that’s keeping them from accurately seeing what I look at? My eyes know what beauty is, and they see who has it, yet they decide that the worst woman is the best. Love, if my vision has been distorted because I look at her with too much bias, spending all my time staring at this woman who sleeps with every man, why have you used my misperceptions as a trap to fool my heart, so that I love the wrong person? Why should my heart think that she could belong to one man when my heart knows she’s available to the whole world? Or why should my eyes witness her promiscuity but act like it’s not true, putting a good face on an ugly truth? My heart and my eyes have been completely mistaken about the truth, and now they both love this unfaithful disease of a woman.

When my mistress swears that she’s completely truthful, I believe her even though I know she lies, so that she’ll think that I’m some naïve young man who’s ignorant about the world and the tricks people play. I pretend to stupidly believe her lies while fooling myself into thinking that she thinks I’m young, even though she knows I’m past my prime. In this way, both of us suppress the simple truth. But why doesn’t she say she’s a liar? And why don’t I say that I’m old? Oh, because it’s easiest to love someone who seems to be trustworthy, and old people who are in love hate to hear their age discussed. Therefore, I sleep with her, and she sleeps with me, and we both flatter ourselves by lying about each other’s faults.

Oh, don’t ask me to justify the cruel infidelities with which you have hurt me. Don’t hurt me by stealing glances at other men; hurt me by telling me about them to my face. Use your power openly, don’t kill me with subtle tricks. Tell me you love other people, but when you’re in my sight, dear heart, don’t glance at other men. Why would you need to hurt me with cunning, when your power over me is already too much for me to defend against? But I’ll make an excuse for you: Ah, my love knows perfectly well that her looks can kill me, so she looks away from me to kill my enemies instead. But don’t do that. Since I’m almost dead already, kill me outright with your looks, and put me out of my misery.

Be as wise as you are cruel: Don’t torture me too much with your disdain, in case sorrow forces me to speak, and I express how pitiless you are in hurting me. If you’ll let me teach you some skill—it would be better if you told me you loved me even if you don’t, as when short-tempered patients close to death get only good news from their doctors. Because if I start to despair, I’ll go mad, and in my madness I might speak ill of you. This world has gotten so bad with its lies and rumors that crazy people believe the lies that crazy people tell. To prevent my going crazy and your being lied about, keep your eyes where they should be, even when your heart’s wandering where it wants.

I swear, I don’t love you with my eyes: They notice a thousand flaws in you. Rather, it’s my heart that loves what my eyes despise; despite what you look like, my heart dotes on you. Nor are my ears delighted by the sound of your voice. Nor do I want to abuse my delicate sense of touch by groping you. Nor do my sense of taste or smell want to be invited to any feast of the senses in which you’re the main course. But neither my brain nor my five senses can dissuade my foolish heart from being your servant. My body stands here like an empty shell with no one to control it, while my heart goes off to be your slave and wretched property. I gain one thing from being plagued with love for this woman: The same woman who’s making me sin rewards me with pain.

Loving you is my sin, and your precious virtue consists in hating my sin, a hate grounded in your own sinful loving. But compare my moral state with your own, and you’ll see I don’t deserve to be reprimanded, or if I do, not from those lips of yours, which you’ve dishonored by using too much. Your lips have kissed as many people and made as many false promises as mine have, and both of us have cheated on our partners, giving away sexual favors where they don’t belong. If I may be allowed to love you the same way you love those other men whom you seduce with your glances, have a little pity for me; then you’ll deserve to be pitied yourself. If you want people to take pity on you and sleep with you, but you don’t show pity for me, you might be turned down because of your own example.

Like an anxious housewife who runs to catch one of her chickens that’s run away, setting down her baby to follow it while her neglected child chases after her and cries out to get her attention—she focusing all of her mind on trying to catch the chicken that’s flying in front of her, not caring about her infant’s distress—in the same way, you’re running after someone who’s running from you, while I, your baby, chase after you from far behind. But if you catch the one you’re hoping for, turn back to me and act like a mother. Kiss me, be kind. If you’ll turn back and stop my loud crying, I’ll pray that you’ll get to have your Will.

I love two people. One comforts me and the other makes me despair. Like two spirits both constantly point me in different directions. The better angel is a beautiful, fair-haired man. The bad one is an evil-looking woman. To help put me in hell sooner, my evil female tempts my angel away from my side. She hopes to make my saint into a devil, seducing him to impure acts in her foul and self-assured way. And though I can suspect him, there’s no way I can tell directly whether my angel has turned into a fiend. But since the two of them are away from me and friendly with each other, I’m guessing that one angel is inside the other—and in hell with her. Yet I’ll never know this for sure, instead living in doubt until my bad angel fires the good one out of hell.

Those lips that look like they were made by the goddess of love herself breathed forth the words, “I hate”—and she was talking to me, the man who’s pining with love for her. But when she saw how unhappy she’d made me, mercy came into her heart and she chided her sweet tongue, which is usually so gentle and merciful, and taught it to speak something else to me. She changed “I hate” by adding a few words the way day follows night, that fiend flying from heaven to hell: She took hatred away from “I hate,” saving my life with “not you.”

My poor soul, you’re the very center of this sinful world, my body, which rebels against you. Why do you starve yourself inside me and suffer from a shortage of supplies while you dress your outside in such expensive finery? Why do you spend so much on your aging body when you get to occupy it for such a short time? All of this expenditure on a body that is eventually going to be eaten by the worms—do you want what you spend to be devoured by worms? Is this what your body was intended for? In that case, soul, feed yourself by starving your body; let it pine for food while you accumulate the riches. Buy time in heaven by giving up worthless time wasted on earth. Feed your inner self; let your body be poor. By starving your body, you will eat up death, which eats up men, and once death is dead, there’s no more dying then.

My love is like a fever, always making me yearn for what will prolong my disease. It lives on whatever will preserve the illness, in order to prop up my fickle desire. My reasoning has acted as doctor and treated my love, but then it left me because I wasn’t following its instructions. Now that I’m finally desperate enough, I realize that sexual desire, which was against the doctor’s orders, is lethal. Now that my mind is past caring, I’m past the point where I can be cured, and I’ve gone frantically crazy and grown increasingly restless. My thoughts and speech are like a madman’s, pointlessly expressing random untruths. For I have sworn that you’re beautiful and thought you radiant when you’re actually as black as hell and as dark as night.

Oh, me! What kind of eyes has love put into my head that I don’t see anything accurately? Or if my eyes do see correctly, what’s happened to my judgment to make me wrongly criticize what they see? If the woman I love to look at is beautiful, why does the rest of the world say she’s not? If she’s not, then a person in love doesn’t see as accurately as others. No—how can a lover see right? Oh, how can a lover’s eye work properly when it’s so distressed by staying awake and crying? It’s no wonder then that I’m wrong about what I see; the sun itself doesn’t see anything until the sky is clear. Oh, ingenious love, you keep me blind with tears so I won’t discover my lover’s foul faults, as I would if my eyes worked properly.

Oh, you cruel woman, can you say I don’t love you when I take sides with you against myself? Don’t I think about you even when I’ve forgotten about myself—and all for your sake, you tyrant? Who hates you that I would call my friend? Who do you frown at that I grovel on and flatter? No—if you scowl at me, don’t I immediately punish myself by moaning? Which quality do I see in myself that would make me too proud to be your servant? All of the best in me worships the worst in you, and you can command me with a glance. But, my love, go on hating me, because now I know your mind. You love people who can see, and I’m blind.

Oh, what is the source of this mighty power you have, which controls my affections despite your inadequacies, making me disbelieve what my eyes truly see until I’m so turned around I swear that daylight isn’t bright? Where did you get this capacity to make bad things look good in you, to perform the most worthless actions so skillfully that I think your worst is better than anyone else’s best? Who taught you how to make me love you more, the more I hear and see good reasons to hate you? Oh, even though I love what other people despise, you shouldn’t despise my love the way other people do. Since your unworthiness made me love you, I’m the person who deserves your love.

Cupid is too young to know right from wrong, but doesn’t everybody know that love is what gives you a conscience? In that case, gentle cheater, don’t criticize me too harshly for my mistake, because your sweet self might turn out to be guilty of the same faults. Because you betray me, I betray my soul to my dumb, rebellious body. My soul tells my body that it can have its way in love. My flesh doesn’t wait to hear any more, but at the sound of your name it rises up and points you out as its prize. My flesh, proud of having you, is happy to be your poor worker, to stand up to do your business and fall down beside you afterward. Do not assume my conscience is lacking just because the woman I call “love” makes my flesh rise and fall for her love.

I know I’m breaking a promise by loving you, but you, swearing you love me, are breaking two promises: cheating on your husband by leaving his bed, then breaking your promise to your new lover by vowing to hate him. But why am I accusing you of breaking two oaths when I break twenty? I am perjured the most, because all of my vows are only made to mislead and exploit you; I’m no longer true to you. For I have sworn great oaths about how kind you are, oaths about your love, your faithfulness, your constancy. And to make you look better I blinded myself, swearing to the opposite of what I actually saw. For I have sworn that you are beautiful; my eye is doubly a liar, offering such a foul lie after swearing to tell the truth.

Cupid put down his torch and fell asleep. One of the nymphs who serve Diana took advantage of this situation and quickly plunged Cupid’s love-inducing flame in a nearby cold spring, which thus acquired a never-ending heat and became a bubbling hot bath that men still use to cure diseases. But at a glance from my mistress, Cupid’s torch fired up again, and Cupid decided to test whether his torch was working by touching my heart with it. I became sick with love and wanted the bath to ease my discomfort. I went to the spring as a sad, sick guest but found no cure. The only thing that could help me is the thing that gave Cupid his new fire: a glance from my mistress’ eye.

Once, while sleeping, little Cupid put down his love-inducing torch while many of Diana’s nymphs, who had all made lifelong vows of chastity, came tripping by. But the most beautiful of Diana’s nymphs picked up that fire that had warmed the hearts of legions of faithful lovers. In this fashion, the commander of hot desire was disarmed by the hand of a virgin as he was sleeping. She quenched this torch in a cool spring nearby, and the spring took a perpetual heat from love’s fire. It turned into a hot bath and healthy remedy for diseased men. But when I, enslaved by my mistress, went to the bath to be cured, this is what I learned: Love’s fire heats water, but water doesn’t cool love.