Structure of Nothing like the Sun

I A Sonnet 60 (spoken)

I B Sonnet 60 (soprano and tenor)

II A Sonnet 123 (spoken)

II B Sonnet 123 (tenor solo)

III A Sonnet 128 (spoken)

III B Sonnet 128 (soprano solo) followed by postlude

IV A Sonnet 94 (spoken)

IV B Sonnet 94 (soprano and tenor)

V A Sonnet 102 (spoken)

V B Sonnet 102 (soprano solo)

VI A Sonnet 146 (spoken)

VI B Sonnet 146 (soprano and tenor) followed by postlude

VII A Sonnet 55 (spoken)

VII B Sonnet 55 (tenor solo)

VIII A Sonnet 64 (spoken)

VIII B Sonnet 64 (soprano and tenor) followed by epilogue

Text of Nothing like the Sun

Sonnet 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,

Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. 

Sonnet 123

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond’ring at the present or the past;

For thy records and thee and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be:

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

Sonnet 128

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled, they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Sonnet 94

They that have pow’r to hurt, and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who moving others are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptations slow,

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces

And husband nature’s riches from expense.

They are the lords and owners of their faces;

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer flow’r is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die.

But if that flow’r with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Sonnet 102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear.

That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming

The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,

And stops his pipe in growth of riper days.

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

Sonnet 146

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

These rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?

Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

Sonnet 55

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this pow’rful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire, shall burn

The living record of your memory.

‘Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterrity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So till the judgment that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Sonnet 64

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,

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 watery 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 a death which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.