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Home  »  English Poetry I  »  116. Fifty-seventh Sonnet

English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

William Shakespeare

116. Fifty-seventh Sonnet

BEING your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend

Nor services to do, till you require:

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour

When you have bid your servant once adieu:

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,

But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought

Save, where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love, that in your will,

Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.