The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics/Book 1/Poem 3

by Francis Turner Palgrave

For other versions of this work, see Sonnet 64 (Shakespeare).

iii

TIME AND LOVE
1

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of out-worn 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. W. Shakespeare