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Home  »  The Oxford Shakespeare  »  Sonnet CXXII

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare: Poems. 1914.

“Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain”

Sonnet CXXII

THY gift, thy tables, are within my brain  
Full character’d with lasting memory,  
Which shall above that idle rank remain,  
Beyond all date, even to eternity:  
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart          5
Have faculty by nature to subsist;  
Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part  
Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.  
That poor retention could not so much hold,  
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;   10
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,  
To trust those tables that receive thee more:  
  To keep an adjunct to remember thee  
  Were to import forgetfulness in me.