Шекспир. Сонет 13. Стань отцом

О если бы ты был собой, мой друг!
но ты не только свой, пока живешь -
ты должен подготовиться к концу
и передать кому-то образ свой.

И взятая в аренду красота
должна найти наследника себе.
По смерти в ней ты обретешь себя,
всю сладость форм придав ее красе.

Кто позволяет дом разрушить свой,
хоть может быть хозяином честным
и против штормовых холодных зим
и вечной смерти сохранить его?

Ты знал отца. Расчёт, мой друг, простой:
Пускай отцом тебя зовет сын твой.


SONNET 13
O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
 No longer yours than you yourself here live:
 Against this coming end you should prepare,
 And your sweet semblance to some other give.
 So should that beauty which you hold in lease
 Find no determination: then you were
 Yourself again after yourself's decease,
 When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
 Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
 Which husbandry in honour might uphold
 Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
 And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
 O, none but unthrifts: -- Dear my love, you know
 You had a father; let your son say so.


NOTES

 XIII. Would that Mr. W. H. were truly master of himself, truly his own! But this mastery and possession, as being, like all other men, subject to Death, it is not possible for him to attain. He may, however, live on in his children; and he is advised thus to perpetuate the honour of his house.

 1. Yourself. The Quarto of 1609, in accordance with the usage of the time, gives "your selfe" as two words. This allows of an emphasis being thrown on the "your," which seems here required; the sense in all probability being, "O that you were truly your own possession!" Cf. "another self," x. 13; "next self," cxxxiii. 6.

 5. Lease. Mr. W. H. is a leaseholder of his comely form, not a freeholder.

 6. Determination. In accordance with common legal phraseology.

 7. Yourself. Q. has "You selfe."

 8. Sweet issue -- sweet form. The employment of "sweet," here and elsewhere in these Sonnets, however much out of harmony with present usage, was in accord with the custom of the times. The same word, for example, is used of the Earl of Pembroke (W. H.) by John Davies of Hereford in his Witte's Pilgrimage: "So so (sweete Lord) so should it bee," &c.

 9. So fair a house must be referred to Mr. W. H.'s ancestry, not to the bodily house ("beauteous roof" of x. 7). The words might be very well used of an eldest son and heir, even though he might not be an only son.