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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

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

Short Sunshine

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

FULL many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovran eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

E’en so my sun one early morn did shine

With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;

But out, alack! he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.