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

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

Sweet Love, Renew Thy Force

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

SWEET love, renew thy force: be it not said

Thine edge shall blunter be than appetite,

Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d,

To-morrow sharpen’d in his former might:

So, love, be thou: although to-day thou fill

Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fulness,

To-morrow see again, and do not kill

The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness.

Let this sad interim like the ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted new

Come daily to the banks, that, when they see

Return of love, more bless’d may be the view:

Or call it winter, which, being full of care,

Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wish’d, more rare.