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Home  »  English Poetry I  »  122. Seventy-third Sonnet

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

William Shakespeare

122. Seventy-third Sonnet

THAT time of year thou may’st in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest:

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie

As the deathbed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was norish’d by:

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.