Page:The Hundred Best Poems (lyrical) in the English language - second series.djvu/106

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

58.
Song from "Twelfth Night."

O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.


59.
Sonnets.

XXXII.

IF thou survive my well-contented day,

When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
"Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,

84