The Golden Treasury. Unknown

           Beauty sat bathing by a spring

            Where fairest shades did hide her;

           The winds blew calm, the birds did sing,

            The cool streams ran beside her.

           My wanton thoughts enticed mine eye

            To see what was forbidden:

           But better memory said, fie!

            So vain desire was chidden:—

                Hey nonny nonny O!

                Hey nonny nonny!

           Into a slumber then I fell,

           When fond imagination

           Seeméd to see, but could not tell

           Her feature or her fashion.

           But ev'n as babes in dreams do smile,

           And sometimes fall a-weeping,

           So I awaked as wise this while

           As when I fell a-sleeping:—

                Hey nonny nonny O!

                Hey nonny nonny!

           Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

           Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

           Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

           And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

           Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

           And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,

           And every fair from fair sometime declines,

           By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.

           But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

           Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

           Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

           When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

           So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

           So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

           When in the chronicle of wasted time

           I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

           And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

           In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;

           Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best

           Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

           I see their antique pen would have exprest

           Ev'n such a beauty as you master now.

           So all their praises are but prophecies

           Of this our time, all, you prefiguring;

           And for they look'd but with divining eyes,

           They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

           For we, which now behold these present days,

           Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

           On a day, alack the day!

           Love, whose month is ever May,

           Spied a blossom passing fair

           Playing in the wanton air:

           Through the velvet leaves the wind

           All unseen 'gan passage find;

           That the lover, sick to death,

           Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.

           Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;

           Air, would I might triumph so!

           But, alack, my hand is sworn

           Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:

           Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;

           Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.

           Do not call it sin in me

           That I am forsworn for thee:

           Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear

           Juno but an Ethiope were,

           And deny himself for Jove,

           Turning mortal for thy love.

           Forget not yet