Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

William Shakespeare

III. Time and Love

WHEN I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay,

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

That Time will come and take my Love away:

—This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.