Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets
Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1041
Public domain basis: Complete text of the 154 sonnets. Public domain.
Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition shakespeares-sonnets at bytes 39762-40376; checksum 1488cd424056641ca8d29bfdc69612963efba0ae856a0f55807ba154f828fd03.


# Sonnet 64

LXIV

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,
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.