Sonnet 18

To nothing fitter can I thee compare

Than to the son of some rich penny-father,

Who having now brought on his end with care,

Leaves to his son all he had heaped together.

This new rich novice, lavish of his chest,

To one man gives, doth on another spend;

Then here he riots; yet among the rest,

Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.

Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste;

False friends, thy kindness born but to deceive thee;

Thy love that is on the unworthy placed;

Time hath thy beauty which with age will leave thee.

Only that little which to me was lent,

I give thee back when all the rest is spent. (Idea x, Drayton)

My lady’s hair is threads of beaten gold,

Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen,

Her eyes the brightest stars that heavens hold,

Her cheeks red roses such as seld have been;

Her pretty lips of red vermillion die,

Her hand of ivory the purest white,

Her blush Aurora or the morning sky,

Her breast displays two silver fountains bright

The spheres her voice, her grace the Graces three;

Her body is the saint that I adore;

Her smiles and favors sweet as honey be;

Her feet fair Thetis praiseth evermore.

But ah, the worst and last is yet behind,

For of a griffon she doth bear the mind! (Fidessa xxxix, Griffin)

My love, I cannot thy fair beauties place

Under those forms which many writers use;

Some like to stones compare their mistress’ face;

Some in the name of flowers do love abuse;

Some makes their love a goldsmith’s shop to be,

Where orient pearls and precious stones abound;

In my conceit these far do disagree

The perfect praise of beauty forth to sound.

O Chloris, thou dost imitate thyself,

Self’s imitating passeth precious stones,

Or all the eastern Indian golden pelf;

Thy red and white with purest fair atones;

Matchless for beauty nature hath thee framed,

Only unkind and cruel thou art named! (Chloris xviii, Smith)

Not marble, nor the guilded monuments

Of princes shall out-live this powerful rime,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Then unswept stone, besmeered with sluttish time.

When wasteful warre shall Statues over-turne,

And broils roots out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

Gainst death, and all oblivious emnity

Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That weare this world out to the ending doome.

So til the judgement that your selfe arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers eies. (Sh. 55)

Sonnet 29

I wish sometimes, although a worthless thing,

Spurred by ambition, glad to aspire,

Myself a monarch, or some might king,

And then my thought do wish for to be higher.

But when I view what winds the cedars toss,

What storms men feel that covet for renown,

I blame myself that I have wished my loss,

And scorn a kingdom, though it give a crown.

Ah, Licia, though the wonder of my thought,

My heart’s content, procurer of my bliss,

For whom a crown I do esteem as nought,

As Asia’s wealth, too mean to buy a kiss;

Kiss me, sweet love, this favor do for me;

Then crowns and kingdoms shall I scorn for thee. (Licia xii, Giles Fletcher)

Sonnets 29 & 90

What cruel star or fate had domination

When I was born, that thus my love is crossed?

Or from what planet had I derivation

That thus my life in seas of woe is crossed?

Doth any life that ever had such hap

That all their actions are of none effect,

Whom fortune never dandled in her lap

But as an abject still doth me reject?

Ah fickle dame! and yet thou constant art

My daily grief and anguish to increase,

And to augment the troubles of my heart

Thou of these bonds wilt never me release;

So that thy darlings me to be may know

The true idea of all worldly woe. (Chloris xxviii, Smith)

Sonnet 30

Arraigned, poor captive at the bar I stand.

The bar of beauty, bar to all my joys;

And up I hold my ever trembling hand,

Wishing or life or death to end annoys.

And when the judge doth question of the guilt,

And bids me to speak, then sorrow shuts up words.

Yea, though he say, “Speak boldly what thou wilt!”

Yet my confused affects no speech affords.

For why? Alas, my passions have no bound,

For fear of death that penetrates so near;

And still one grief another doth confound,

Yet doth at length a way to speech appear.

Then, for I speak too late, the Judge doth give

His sentence that in prison I shall live. (Fidessa, v. Griffin)

Taking my pen, with words to cast my woe,

Duly to count the sum of all my cares,

I find my griefs innumerable grow,

The reck’nings rise to millions of despairs.

And thus dividing of my fatal hous,

The payments of my love I read and cross;

Subtracting, set my sweets unto my sours,

My joy’s arrearage leads me to my loss.

And thus mine eyes a debtor to thine eye,

Which by extortion gaineth all their looks,

My heart hath paid such grievous usury,

That all their wealth lies in thy beauty’s books.

And all is thine which hath been due to me,

And I a bankrupt, quite undone by thee. (Idea, iii. Drayton)

Weigh but the cause, and give me leave to plain me,

For all my hurt, that my heart’s queen hath wrought it;

She whom I love so dear, the more to pain me,

Withholds my right where I have dearly bought it.

Dearly I bought that was so slightly rated,

Even with the price of blood and body’s wasting;

She would not yield that ought might be abated,

For all she saw my love was pure and lasting,

And yet now scorns performance of the passion,

And with her presence justice overruleth.

She tells me flat her beauty bears no action;

And so my plea and process she excludeth.

What wrong she doth, the world may well perceive it,

To accept my faith at first, and then to leave it. (Delia, iv. Daniel)

Sonnet 75

Care-charmer sleep! Sweet ease in restless misery!

The captive’s liberty, and his freedom’s song!

Balm of the bruised heart! Man’s chief felicity!

Brother of quiet death, when life is too, too long!

A comedy it is, and now an history;

What is not sleep unto the feeble mind!

It eases his that toils and his that’s sorry;

It makes the deaf to hear, to see the blind;

Ungentle sleep, thou helpest all but me!

For when I sleep, my soul is vexest most.

It is Fidessa that doth master thee;

If she approach, alas, thy power is lost!

But here she is! See how he runs amain!

I fear at night he will not come again. (Fidessa XV, Griffin)

Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night,

Brother to death, in silent darkness born,

Believe my anguish, and restore the light;

With dark forgetting of my care return,

And let the day be time enough to mourn

The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth;

Let waking eyes suffice to wail their soorn,

Without the torment of the night’s untruth.

Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,

To model forth the passion of the morrow;

Never let rising sun approve you liars,

To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow;

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,

And never wake to feel the day’s disdain. (Delia LI, Daniel)

Also see Griffin, p.58 for Sidney’s “When far-spent night . . .”

Sonnet 106

Let others sing of knights and paladins

In aged accents and untimely words,

Paint shadows in imaginary lines

Which well the reach of their high wits records;

But I must sing of thee and those fair eyes

Authentic shall my verse in time to come,

When yet th’unborn shall say, Lo, where she lies,

Whose beauty made him speak that else was dumb!

These are the arks, the trophies I erect,

That fortify thy name against old age;

And these they sacred virtues must protect

Against the dark and time’s consuming rage.

Though the error of my youth in them appear,

Suffice, they show I lived and loved thee, dear.

Sonnet 129

Thou blind man’s mark! thou fool’s self-chosen snare!

Fond fancy’s scum! and dregs of scattered thought!

Band of all evils! cradle of causeless care!

Thou web of will! whose end is never wrought.

Desire! Desire! I have too dearly bought,

With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware!

Too long, too long asleep thou hast me brought!

Who should my mind to higher things prepare.

But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought!

In vain thou mad’st me to vain things aspire!

In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire!

Within myself to seek my only hire,

Desiring nought, but how to kill Desire. (Sidney, postscript, A&S)

O lust, of sacred love the foul corruptor,

Usurper of her heavenly dignity!

Folly’s first child, good counsel’s interrupter,

Fostered by sloth, first step to infamy!

Thou hell-born monster that affrights the wise,

Love-choking lust, virtue’s disdainful foe,

Wisdom’s contemner, spurner of advice,

Swift to forswear, to faithful promise slow!

Be thou as far from her chaste-thoughted breast,

Her true love-kindled heart, her virtuous mind,

AS is all-seeing Tysan from the West,

When from Aurora’s arms he doth untwind.

Nature did make her of a heavenly mold,

Only true heavenly virtues to enfold. (E.C., Emariodulfe)

Sonnet 141

When conquering love did first my heart assail,

Unto mine aid I summoned every sense,

Doubting if that proud tyrant should prevail,

My heart should suffer for mine eye’s offense.

But he with beauty first corrupted sight,

My hearing bribed with her tongue’s harmony,

My taste by her sweet lips drawn with delight,

My smelling won with her breath’s spicery.

But when my touching came to play his part,

The king of sense, greater than the rest,

He yields love up the keys unto my heart,

And tells the others how they should be blest.

And thus by those of whom I hoped for aid,

To cruel love my soul was first betrayed. (Idea 29, Drayton)

Thine eye the glass where I behold my heart,

Mine eye the window through the which thine eye

May see my heart, and there thyself espy

In bloody colours how thou painted art.

Thine eye the pile is of a murdering dart;

Mine eye the sight thou tak’st thy level by

To hit my heart, and never shoot’st awry.

Mine eye thus helps thine eye to work my smart.

Thine eye a fire is both in heat and light;

Mine eyes of tears a river doth become.

O that the water of mine eye had might

To quench the flames that from thine eye doth come,

Or that the fires kindled by thine eye,

The flowing streams of mine eyes could make dry. (Diana v, Constable)

See also Donne sonnet, p.125 for the death of Death.