| |
| ALL kings, and all their favourites, | |
| All glory of honours, beauties, wits, | |
| The sun itself, which makes time, as they pass, 1 | |
| Is elder by a year now than it was | |
| When thou and I first one another saw. | 5 |
| All other things to their destruction draw, | |
| Only our love hath no decay; | |
| This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday; | |
| Running it never runs from us away, | |
| But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. | 10 |
| |
| Two graves must hide thine and my corse; | |
| If one might, death were no divorce. | |
| Alas! as well as other princes, we | |
| —Who prince enough in one another be— | |
| Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears, | 15 |
| Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears; | |
| But souls where nothing dwells but love | |
| —All other thoughts being inmates—then shall prove | |
| This or a love increasèd there above, | |
| When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove. | 20 |
| |
| And then we shall be throughly blest; | |
| But now no more than all the rest. | |
| Here upon earth we’re kings, and none 2 but we | |
| Can be such kings, nor of 3 such subjects be. | |
| Who is so safe as we? where none can do | 25 |
| Treason to us, except one of us two. | |
| True and false fears let us refrain, | |
| Let us love nobly, and live, and add again | |
| Years and years unto years, till we attain | |
| To write threescore; this is the second of our reign. | 30 |
