Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 146 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 146

Shakespeare's Sonnet 146


  1    Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
  2    [....] these rebel powers that thee array;
  3    Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
  4    Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
  5    Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
  6    Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
  7    Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
  8    Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
  9    Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
 10    And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
 11    Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
 12    Within be fed, without be rich no more:
 13      So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
 14      And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

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