Shakespeare's Sonnets

by William Shakespeare

looks

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

28 How can I then return in happy plight, That am debarr’d the benefit of rest? When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night, But day by night and night by day oppress’d; And each, though enemies to either’s reign, Do in consent shake hands to torture me; The one by toil, the other to complain How far I toil, still farther off from thee. I tell the day, to please him thou art bright And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven; So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night, When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

30

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometime absent from thy heart, Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follows where thou art. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d; And when a woman woos, what woman’s son Will sourly leave her till he have prevail’d? Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,— Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.

moiety

57 Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours, and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu; Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought Save, where you are, how happy you make those. So true a fool is love, that in your will, Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

and all my every part;

The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.

Than niggard truth would willingly impart.

nah gurl

For I am sham’d by that which I bring forth, And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

be took.

rape

penury

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

Hearing you praised, I say “’Tis so, ’tis true,”

rape

happy to die!

augurs

130 My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground; And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

138 When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue; On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love, loves not to have years told. Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

143

147 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 physic did except. Past cure I am, now reason is past care, And frantic-mad with evermore unrest; My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are, At random from the truth vainly express’d; For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.