Shakespeare S Sonnets

Handout

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Sonnet 18Sonnet 148

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? O me! what eyes hath love put in my head

Thou art more lovely and more temperate” Which have no correspondence with true sight:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, Or if they have, where is my judgment fled?

And summer's lease hath all too short a date: That censures falsely what they see aright?
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; What means the world to say it is not so?
And every fair from fair sometime declines, If it be not, then love doth well denote
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: No
But thy eternal summer shall not fade How can it? How can love’s eye be true
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; That is so vex’d with watching and with tears?
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, No marvel then though I mistake my view:
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: The sun itself sees not til heaven cleares:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, O cunning love! with tears thou keepest me blind
So long lives this and this gives life to thee. Lest eyes well seeing thou fowl faults should find!

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.

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.