Sonnet CLIII by William Shakespeare
Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep: A maid of Dian’s this advantage found, And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep In a cold valley-fountain of that ground; Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love A dateless lively heat, still to endure, And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove Against strange […]
Sonnet CLII by William Shakespeare
In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn, But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing, In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn, In vowing new hate after new love bearing. But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee, When I break twenty? I am perjured most; For all my […]
Sonnet CLI by William Shakespeare
Love is too young to know what conscience is; Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; My soul doth tell my body […]
Sonnet CL by William Shakespeare
O, from what power hast thou this powerful might With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and […]
Sonnet CIX by William Shakespeare
O, never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify. As easy might I from myself depart As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, not […]
Sonnet CIV by William Shakespeare
To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three […]
Sonnet CIII by William Shakespeare
Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside! O, blame me not, if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a face That over-goes my blunt […]
Sonnet CII by William Shakespeare
My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming The owner’s tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new and then but in the spring When I was wont to greet it with my lays, As Philomel in […]
Sonnet CI by William Shakespeare
O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed? Both truth and beauty on my love depends; So dost thou too, and therein dignified. Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say ‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix’d; Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay; But […]
Sonnet C by William Shakespeare
Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song, Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem In gentle numbers time so idly spent; Sing to the ear that doth thy […]
Sonnet 9: Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye by William Shakespeare
Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, That thou consum’st thy self in single life? Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife. The world will be thy widow and still weep, That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private […]
Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring by William Shakespeare
From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me […]
Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs […]
Sonnet 96: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness by William Shakespeare
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are loved of more and less; Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a thronèd queen, The basest jewel will be well esteemed. So are those errors that […]
Sonnet CXXVIII by William Shakespeare
How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st, Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, […]
Sonnet CXXVII by William Shakespeare
In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame: For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no […]
Sonnet CXXVI by William Shakespeare
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow’st; If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that […]
Sonnet CXXV by William Shakespeare
Were ‘t aught to me I bore the canopy, With my extern the outward honouring, Or laid great bases for eternity, Which prove more short than waste or ruining? Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent, For compound sweet forgoing simple savour, Pitiful thrivers, […]
Sonnet CXXIX by William Shakespeare
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait On purpose laid to […]
Sonnet CXXIV by William Shakespeare
If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d’ As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, […]
Sonnet CXXIII by William Shakespeare
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; They are but dressings of a former sight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou dost foist upon us that is old, And rather make them born to […]
Sonnet CXXII by William Shakespeare
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Full character’d with lasting memory, Which shall above that idle rank remain Beyond all date, even to eternity; Or at the least, so long as brain and heart Have faculty by nature to subsist; Till each to razed oblivion yield his part Of thee, thy record never […]
Sonnet CXXI by William Shakespeare
‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d, When not to be receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost which is so deem’d Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing: For why should others false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which […]
Sonnet CXX by William Shakespeare
That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow which I then did feel Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel. For if you were by my unkindness shaken As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time, And I, a tyrant, have […]
Sonnet CXVIII by William Shakespeare
Like as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge, As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge, Even so, being tuff of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To […]
Sonnet CXVII by William Shakespeare
Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all Wherein I should your great deserts repay, Forgot upon your dearest love to call, Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; That I have frequent been with unknown minds And given to time your own dear-purchased right That I have hoisted sail to all the […]
Sonnet CXV by William Shakespeare
Those lines that I before have writ do lie, Even those that said I could not love you dearer: Yet then my judgment knew no reason why My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. But reckoning time, whose million’d accidents Creep in ‘twixt vows and change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the […]
Sonnet CXLVIII by William Shakespeare
O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head, Which have no correspondence with true sight! Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled, That censures falsely what they see aright? If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, What means the world to say it is not so? If it be […]
Sonnet CXLVII by William Shakespeare
My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, The uncertain sickly appetite to please. My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which […]
Sonnet CXLVI by William Shakespeare
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, these rebel powers that thee array; Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? […]
Sonnet CXLV by William Shakespeare
Those lips that Love’s own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’ To me that languish’d for her sake; But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that ever sweet Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to […]
Sonnet CXLIX by William Shakespeare
Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, When I against myself with thee partake? Do I not think on thee, when I forgot Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend? On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon? Nay, if thou lour’st […]
Sonnet CXLIV by William Shakespeare
Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a […]
Sonnet CXLIII by William Shakespeare
Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch One of her feather’d creatures broke away, Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay, Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent To follow that which flies […]
Sonnet CXLII by William Shakespeare
Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving; Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, That have profaned their scarlet ornaments And seal’d false bonds of […]
Sonnet CXLI by William Shakespeare
In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note; But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who in despite of view is pleased to dote; ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry […]
Sonnet CXL by William Shakespeare
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit, better it were, Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so; As testy sick men, when their […]
Sonnet CXIX by William Shakespeare
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win! What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! How have mine eyes out of their spheres been […]
Sonnet CXIV by William Shakespeare
Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you, Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy, To make of monsters and things indigest Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, Creating every bad a perfect best, As fast […]
Sonnet CXIII by William Shakespeare
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind; And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out; For it no form delivers to the heart Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch: Of his quick objects hath […]