William Shakespeare

My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,And perspective it is the painter’s art.For through the painter must you see his skill,To find where your true image pictured lies;Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:Mine eyes have drawn…

All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown’d;But those same tongues that give thee so thine ownIn other accents do this praise confoundBy seeing farther than the eye hath shown.They look into the beauty of thy mind,And that, in…

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 assailed;And when a woman woos, what woman’s sonWill sourly leave her till she have prevailed?Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,And chide try beauty and thy straying…

My life hath in this line some interest,Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.When thou reviewest this, thou dost reviewThe very part was consecrate to thee:The earth can have but earth, which is his due;My spirit is thine, the better part of me:So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,The prey of…

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood;Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,To the wide world and all her fading sweets;But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:O, carve not with the hours my love’s fair brow,Nor draw no…

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquaintedWith shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling,Much steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.And for a woman wert thou first created;Till Nature, as she wrought thee,…

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,As if by some instinct the wretch did knowHis rider loved not speed, being made from thee:The bloody spur cannot provoke him onThat…

Such seems your beauty still. Three Winters coldHave from the forests shook three Summers’ pride;Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn’dIn process of the seasons have I seen,Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,Steal from his figure, and no…

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold–Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang,In me thou see’st the twilight of such dayAs after Sunset fadeth in the West,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see’st the glowing of such fireThat on…

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless criesAnd 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…