I Loved thee once, I ’ll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain:
God sends me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.
Nothing could have my love...
Since there ’s no helpe,—come, let us kisse and parte,
Nay, I have done,—you get no more of me;
And I am glad,—yea, glad with all my hearte,
That thus so cleanly I myselfe can free.
Shake hands forever!—cancel all our vows;
And when we meet at any time againe,
Be it not seene in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love...
Sonnet Lxxxvii.
farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my...
From “All ’s Well That Ends Well,” Act I. Sc. 1.
I AM undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:...
From “As You Like It,” Act II. Sc. 7.
BLOW, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere...
From “The Nice Valour,” Act III. Sc. 3.
HENCE, all ye vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!
There ’s naught in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see ’t
But only melancholy,
O, sweetest melancholy!
Welcome, folded arms, and fixèd eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,...
From “King Henry VIII.,” Act III. Sc. 2.
CROMWELL, I did not think to shed a tear
In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me,
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let ’s dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
And—when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of—...
The Lopped tree in time may grow again;
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moist’ning shower;
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favors to the...
From the French by Louise Stuart Costello
WHILE yet these tears have power to flow
For hours for ever past away;
While yet these swelling sighs allow
My faltering voice to breathe a lay;
While yet my hand can touch the chords,
My tender lute, to wake thy tone;
While yet my mind no thought affords,
But one remembered...
From “Hamlet,” Act III. Sc. 1.
HAMLET.—To be, or not to be,—that is the question:—
Whether ’t is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?—To die, to sleep;—
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand...
