Sonnet 107

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age;

Now with the drops of this most balmy time,

My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,

Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,

While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:

And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

None of my fears, nor the whole world dreaming

Of what might change or become,

Can grasp the extent of gleaming

Love, over which no thing can loom.

The moon suffers its own erasure.

At times, surprised, we’ll all curse our fate.

We’ll presume today’s will be tomorrow’s pleasure,

And pretend peace will have no end date.

Now, anointed on a balmy night,

My love is young, and death succumbs to me,

Since I’ll live on in this poem’s light,

While corpses mark his territory.

And here you’ll have a sacred place,

Safer than any palace.