i like sonnets, especially shakespeare's sonnets. i've posted "sonnet 43" before but i really felt i should post "40-43". collectively, they're who i am.
"take all my loves, my love; yea, take them all.
what hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
no love, my love, that thou mayst true love call.
all mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
then if for my love thou my love receivest,
i cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest.
but yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
by wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
i do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief,
although thou steal thee all my poverty;
and yet love knows it is a greater grief
to bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.
lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
when i am sometime absent from thy heart,
thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
for still temptation follows where thou art.
gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;
beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
and when a woman woos, what woman’s son
will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
ay me, but yet thou might’st my seat forbear,
and chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
who lead thee in their riot even there
where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
thine by thy beauty being false to me.
that thou hast her it is not all my grief,
and yet it may be said i loved her dearly;
that she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
a loss in love that touches me more nearly.
loving offenders, thus i will excuse ye:
thou dost love her because thou knowst i love her;
and for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.
if i lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
and losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
both find each other, and i lose both twain,
and both for my sake lay on me this cross.
but here’s the joy; my friend and i are one;
sweet flatt'ry! then she loves but me alone.
when most i wink, then do mine eyes best see,
for all the day they view things unrespected;
but when i sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
and, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright—
how would thy shadow’s form form happy show
to the clear day with thy much clearer light,
when to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?
how would, i say, mine eyes be blessèd made
by looking on thee in the living day,
when in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?
all days are nights to see till i see thee,
and nights bright days when dreams do show thee me."
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