Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale/Text/Sonnet 8
8
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy? 4
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. 8
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing: 12
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
1 Music to hear: you whose voice is music
10 mutual ordering: ordered harmony
14 'Thou single wilt prove none'; cf. n.