Sonnet #124

Poems by William Shakespeare

If my dear love were but tile child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers
gather'd.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short number'd hours
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with
showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have liv'd for
crime.


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