Shakespeare in Loves

Music: Conrad Cummings

Lyrics: William Shakespeare, Sonnets 126, 64, and 19
 
 
1. Sonnet 126

O thou my lovely boy, who in they power

Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st

Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st;

If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack),

As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill

May Time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.

Yet fear, her, O thou minion of her pleasure,

She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure!

Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.
 
 
2. Sonnet 64

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,

When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,

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 wat’ry 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 death which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
 
 
3. Sonnet 19

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,

And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood,

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,

And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,

O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.