Category William Shakespeare

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,This bird of dawning singeth all night long;And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,So hallow’d and so gracious…

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tombWhich hides your life and shows not half your parts.If I could write the beauty of your eyesAnd in fresh numbers number all your graces,The age to come would say ‘This…

The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;My bonds in thee are all determinate.For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?And for that riches where is my deserving?The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,And so…

The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deemFor that sweet odour which doth in it live.The Canker-blooms have full as deep a dyeAs the perfumed tincture of the Roses,Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonlyWhen summer’s breath their…

Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel;For never-resting time leads summer onTo hideous winter, and confounds him there;Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where:Then were not…

And there reigns love and all love’s loving parts,And all those friends which I thought buried.How many a holy and obsequious tearHath dear religious love stol’n from mine eyeAs interest of the dead, which now appearBut things removed that hidden…

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from theeSo far from home into my deeds to pry,To find out shames and idle hours in me,The…

So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite,Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,Or any of these all, or all, or more,Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,I make my love…

And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,And purest faith unhappily forsworn,And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,And strength by limping sway disabled,And art made tongue-tied by authority,And folly doctor-like controlling skill,And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,And…

The better angel is a man right fair,The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.To win me soon to hell, my female evilTempteth my better angel from my side,And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,Wooing his purity with her…