Selected sonnets from William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born in Stratford-on-Avon. Details of his life were rather sketchy. At the age of 18 he married a woman eight years his senior, Anne Hathaway. They would have a son and twin daughters. He lived as an actor, playwright, and poet. He wrote more than 150 sonnets which reveal wide and varied interests. Some of his sonnets are about a mysterious “dark lady”, which fueled much scholarly speculation. His historical plays include comedies such as Pericles (1608) and Cymbeline (1611); tragedies like Hamlet (1602) and Othello (1604). He retired in 1611 in the largest house in Stratford. Considered the national bard of England, his works are considered not only the best literature of England but also among the best in the world.

 

Image taken from: http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Love-Poetry/1762052

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

 

Image taken from: http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/37217773.jpg

SONNET 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.

Image taken from: http://www.writespirit.net/blog/2012/04/18/let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds/

SONNET 116

 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

R E F E R E N C E S

 

Abcarian R. & M. Klotz. (2000). Literature: Reading and writing the human experience (7^th shorter ed.) Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/