William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Since Brass, nor Stone. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Since Brass, nor Stone

By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)


SINCE 1 brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action 2 is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out	5
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack!
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest 3 lie hid?	10
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty 4 can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Note 1. Sonnet lxv. Shake-speare’s Sonnettes, 1609. [back]

Note 2. Action: apparently used in the legal sense suggested by hold a plea in line 3. [back]

Note 3. Time’s chest: Theobald proposed Time’s guest, but Malone defends this reading by showing that the image of a jewel in a chest was a favorite one with Shakespeare. [back]

Note 4. Of beauty: the or of the Quarto is a manifest error. [back]

CONTENTS · GLOSSARY · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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