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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet 13. Letters and lines, we see are soon defaced

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Idea

Sonnet 13. Letters and lines, we see are soon defaced

Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

[First printed in 1594 (No. 21), and in all later editions.]

To the Shadow

LETTERS and lines, we see are soon defaced.

Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust.

The diamond shall once consume to dust;

And freshest colours, with foul stains disgraced.

Paper and ink can paint but naked words.

To write with blood, of force offends the sight.

And if with tears, I find them all too light:

And sighs and signs, a silly hope afford:

O sweetest Shadow, how thou serv’st my turn!

Which still shalt be, as long as there is sun,

Nor whilst the world is, never shall be done;

Whilst moon shall shine, or any fire shall burn:

That everything whence shadow doth proceed,

May in his shadow, my Love’s story read.