When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes' new wail my Dear times waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances forgone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of a fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Sonnet 30, William Shakespeare
(painting by Gustave Courbet)
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes' new wail my Dear times waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances forgone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of a fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Sonnet 30, William Shakespeare
(painting by Gustave Courbet)
