The Anniversary

• All kings, and all their favourites,
• All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
• The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass,
• Is elder by a year now than it was
• When thou and I first one another saw.
• All other things to their destruction draw,
• Only our love hath no decay;
• This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;
• Running it never runs from us away,
• But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
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• Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
• If one might, death were no divorce.
• Alas ! as well as other princes, we
• —Who prince enough in one another be—
• Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
• Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
• But souls where nothing dwells but love
• —All other thoughts being inmates—then shall prove
• This or a love increasèd there above,
• When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.
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• And then we shall be throughly blest;
• But now no more than all the rest.
• Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we
• Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
• Who is so safe as we? where none can do
• Treason to us, except one of us two.
• True and false fears let us refrain,
• Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
• Years and years unto years, till we attain
• To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.