Then let not winters wragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer ere thou be distil’d:
Make sweet some viall; treasure thou some place,
With beauties treasure ere it be selfe kil’d:
That use is not forbidden usery,
Which happies those that pay the willing lone;
That’s for thy selfe to breed an other thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
Ten times thy selfe were happier then thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee,
Then what could death doe if thou should’st depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not selfe-wild for thou art much too faire,
To be deaths conquest and make wormes thine heire.

(Text of the sonnet from the C.D. Atkins emendation of the 1609 quarto)

Those howers that with gentle worke did frame,
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tirants to the very same,
And that unfaire which fairely doth excell:
For never resting time leads Summer on,
To hidious winter and confounds him there,
Sap checkt with frost and lustie leav’s quite gon,
Beauty ore-snow’d and barenes every where.
Then were not summers distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glasse,
Beauties effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor noe remembrance what it was.
But flowers distil’d though they with winter meete,
Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

(Text of the sonnet from the C.D. Atkins emendation of the 1609 quarto)

Unthrifty lovelinesse why dost thou spend,
Upon thy selfe thy beauties legacy?
Natures bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being franck she lends to those are free:
Then beautious nigard why doost thou abuse,
The bountious largesse given thee to give?
Profitles userer why doost thou use
So great a summe of summes yet can’st not live?
For having traffike with thy selfe alone,
Thou of thy selfe thy sweet selfe dost deceave,
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable Audit can’st thou leave?
Thy unus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
Which used lives th’executor to be.

(Text of the sonnet from the C.D. Atkins emendation of the 1609 quarto)

Looke in thy glasse and tell the face thou vewest,
Now is the time that face should forme an other,
Whose fresh repaire if now thou not renewest,
Thou doo’st beguile the world, unblesse some mother.
For where is she so faire whose un-eard wombe
Disdaines the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tombe,
Of his selfe love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mothers glasse and she in thee
Calls backe the lovely Aprill of her prime,
So thou through windowes of thine age shalt see,
Dispight of wrinkles this thy goulden time.
But if thou live remembred not to be,
Die single and thine Image dies with thee.

(Text of the sonnet from the C.D. Atkins emendation of the 1609 quarto)

When fortie Winters shall besiege thy brow,
And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field,
Thy youthes proud livery so gaz’d on now,
Wil be a totter’d weed of smal worth held:
Then being askt, where all thy beautie lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty daies;
To say within thine owne deepe sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftlesse praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauties use,
If thou couldst answere this faire child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse
Prooving his beautie by succession thine.
This were to be new made when thou art ould,
And see thy blood warme when thou feel’st it could.

(Text of the sonnet from the C.D. Atkins emendation of the 1609 quarto)