Sonnet 4
By William Shakespeare
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.
爱美之心，人皆有之，
自然流芳，人皆往之。
天赐佳人，何故扊扅，
拥之弗用，反承其赘。
孑影而怜，恐以己欺，
天有命也，未可答矣。
风摧落花，唯其实焉。
Paris, how fairest thou dost appear,
With paintings weeping midst the showers so dear,
As roses bloom for summer’s warmest day,
To lost Elysian goddesses they convey.
How chill this eve, as silence deepens more,
And bells that cut through stillness seem to soar,
Noontide in Paris wounds me with its spell,
Yet in her dawning, I in healing dwell.
Oh, Paris, beauty that none can outshine,
If one should query thy allure divine,
The Seine’s own song no ebb of time can tire,
In Paris, where dreams and truth inspire.
A living poem shared by all mankind,
Wherein souls lost in love forever find.
In verdant boughs where summer’s warmth did cling,
A sudden step into the frigid storehouse of winter brings.
Damp stacks of hay at morn with hoarfrost crowned,
Embers wane, leaving the hearth’s blackened ground.
The watchman, head on knees, in corner curled,
His breath, through fingers frostbitten, slowly purls.
Beasts low in nearby pens, where lantern light doth stay,
—Dead twigs by wintry gusts to sparks betray.
The cold wind whips through horses in the mist,
New ice upon the lake as if in birth it twists.
The sands conceal the river’s edge, it seems,
And shores embrace the waters in their dreams.
Through winters long, by fancy’s force I’ll bind,
How blossoms seize the tempest’s fiercest grind.
2020