Best Shakespear Sonnets 2024:

Table of Contents

Nativity–William Shakespear

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in April 1564. The exact date of his birth is not recorded but it is most often celebrated around the world on 23 April. Baptisms usually took place within three days of a birth so it’s unlikely that Shakespeare was born before April 23. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 at the age of 52 and was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.

Works

Shakespeare sonnets are more than just poetic level. We delve into the most profound Shakespearean sonnets that stand out as essential life lessons. These sonnets provide valuable perspectives that remain remarkably relevant in modern life.

Some notable aspects of Shakespeare’s poetry to explore include.

1. The transience of youth

2. The enduring power of true love

3. The flowing nature of beauty

4. Life complexities and paradoxes

Sonnets

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 worths unknown, although his height be taken.

Loves not times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickles 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.

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill

Th’ 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 expressed

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

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 untutored youth

Unlearnèd 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 suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust

And wherefore say not I that I am old

Oh, 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 flattered b

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 ow’st

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

From fairest creatures we desire increase

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die

But as the riper should by time decease

His tender heir might bear his memory

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel

Making a famine where abundance lies

Thyself thy foe to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be

To eat the world’s due by the grave and thee.

They that have power to hurt and will do none

That do not do the thing they most do show

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces

And husband nature’s riches from expense

They are the lords and owners of their faces

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet

Though to itself it only live and die

But if that flower with base infection meet

The basest weed outbraves his dignity

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe

And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

My Glass Shall Not Persuade Me I Am Old

My glass shall not persuade me I am old
So long as youth and thou are of one date
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold
Then look I death my days should expiate
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me
How can I then be elder than thou art
O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain
Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

When I do count the clock that tells the time

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night

When I behold the violet past prime

And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard

Then of thy beauty do I question make

That thou among the wastes of time must go

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow

And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.