LVI. Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said LXIII. Against my love shall be, as I am now O, lest the world should task you to recite LXXIII. That time of year thou mayst in me behold LXXXIV. LXXXVII. XC. Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid LXXX. O, how I faint when I of you do write LXXXI. Or I shall live your epitaph to make Who is it that says most? which can say more LXXXV. My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still LXXXVI. Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing LXXXVIII. When thou shalt be disposed to set me light. Some glory in their birth, some in their skill But do thy worst to steal thyself away So shall I live, supposing thou art true XCIV. They that have power to hurt and will do none XCV. How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame XCVI. Some say, thy fault is youth, some wantonness XCVII. How like a winter hath my absence been What's in the brain that ink may character CIX. O, never say that I was false of heart CX. Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there CXI. O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you CXV. Those lines that I before have writ do lie CXVI. Let me not to the marriage of true minds O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power In the old age black was not counted fair How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st CXXIX. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame CXXX. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun CXXXI. Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art Be wise as thou art cruel: do not press In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate CXLIII. Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch Two loves I have of comfort and despair Those lips that Love's own hand did make Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth 191 NOTE. The present Edition differs from that in the Parchment Series in having fuller notes, and Part II. of the Introduction, giving a survey of the Literature of the Sonnets. The best counsel to a reader of Shakspere is to cling close to the text of plays and poems, and remain with it long. Notes are made to be used, and then cast aside. But the careful student knows how presumptuous a mistake it is to suppose that an offhand reader will always take up the meaning rightly. The study of each line and each sentence on this side and on that is like the preliminary posturings of wrestlers before the grapple and the tug. To those unversed in the art it is foolishness; but others know the uses of the wary eye and slow approach. INTRODUCTION. PART I. No edition of Shakspere's Sonnets,1 apart from his other writings, with sufficient explanatory notes, has hitherto appeared. Notes are an evil, but in the case of the Sonnets a necessary evil, for many passages are hard to understand. I have kept beside me for several years an interleaved copy of Dyce's text, in which I set down from time to time anything that seemed to throw light on a difficult passage. From these jottings, and from the Variorum Shakspere of 1821,2 my annotations have been chiefly drawn. I have had before me in preparing this volume the editions of Bell, Clark and Wright, Collier, Delius, Dyce, Halliwell, Hazlitt, Knight, Palgrave, Staunton, Grant White; the translations of FrançoisVictor Hugo, Bodenstedt, and others; and the greater portion of the extensive Shakspere Sonnets literature, 1 The poet's name is rightly written Shakespeare, rightly also Shakspere. If I err in choosing the form Shakspere, I err with the owner of the name. 2 To which this general reference may suffice. I often found it convenient to alter slightly the notes of the Variorum Shakspere, and I have not made it a rule to refer each note from that edition to its individual writer. B |
