COMFORT IN CALAMITY

Sonnets

WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavinly from woe to woe tell o’er
The said account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, − and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare