English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 136. One Hundred and Forty-sixth Sonnet |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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| POOR Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, | |
| Fool’d by these rebel powers that thee array, | |
| Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, | |
| Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? | |
| Why so large cost, having so short a lease, | 5 |
| Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? | |
| Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, | |
| Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end? | |
| Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss, | |
| And let that pine to aggravate thy store; | 10 |
| Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; | |
| Within be fed, without be rich no more: | |
| So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, | |
| And, death once dead, there’s no more dying then. | |
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