Escalation

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 time’s 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 cancell’d woe

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan

Which I new pay as if not paid before

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend

All losses are restor’d and sorrows end

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear’d 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 posterity

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

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:

For then my thoughts–from far where I abide–

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide

Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

Save that my soul’s imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new

Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find