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William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 [1640], Poems: vvritten by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent (Printed... by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Iohn Benson [etc.], London) [word count] [S11600].

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The benefit of Friendship. [Sonnet XXX / Sonnet XXXI / Sonnet XXXII]
When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
Then can I drowne an eye (unus'd to flow)
For precious friends hid in deaths datelesse night,
And weepe a fresh loves long since canceld woe,
And moane th'expence of many a vanisht sight.
Then can I greeve at greevances fore gone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,
VVhich I new pay, as if not payd before.
  But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)
  All losses are restor'd, and sorrowes end.
Thy bosome is indeared with all hearts,
VVhich I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there raignes Love and all Loves loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious teare
Hath deare religious love stolne from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appeare,
But things remov'd that hidden in there lye.
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live.
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gon,
VVho all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many, now is thine alone,
  Their images I lov'd, I view in thee,
  And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

-- --

If thou survive my well contented day,
When that churle death my bones with dust shall cover
And shalt by fortune once more re-survay:
These poore rude lines of thy deceased Lover:
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
And though they be out-stript by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rime,
Exceeded by the hight of happier men.
Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
Had my friends Muse growne with this growing age,
A dearer birth then this his love had brought
To march in ranckes of better equipage:
But since he dyed and Poets better prove,
Theirs for their stile ile read, his for his love.
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William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 [1640], Poems: vvritten by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent (Printed... by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Iohn Benson [etc.], London) [word count] [S11600].