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Sonnet 14 |
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Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
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| –William Shakespeare |
Shakespeare's Sonnet 14 is another of his procreation sonnets, this one featuring the speaker declaring that he has the power to predict the future, but he does not do so by reading the stars or anything of the like, and he does not predict disasters or how well a prince will rule. He takes his knowledge from the eyes of the poem's addressee, and from them he predicts that his death is in fact the death of Beauty itself.
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