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 confin’d doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,
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 rime,
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.
In plain English
My own anxieties and all the world's gloomy predictions about the future cannot damage the bond between us. What seemed destined to fail has survived. The crisis everyone feared—often read as a political or astronomical threat—has passed. The prophecies of doom have been proven wrong, and uncertainty has given way to peace and stability.
In this hopeful moment, my love for you is renewed and strengthened. Death has no power over me, because I will outlive it through these poems. While Death rules over people who leave no record behind, I will preserve you here in these verses—humble as they are.
Your name and memory will endure in my writing long after tyrants' monuments and brass tombs have crumbled and vanished. This poem is your true monument, one that time cannot destroy.
