1564-1616 · Stratford and London. Alongside the plays, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, first printed together in 1609: fourteen lines each, three quatrains and a closing couplet that turns the whole poem. Most address a young man he loves, many of the rest a dark-haired woman, and nobody knows who either was. Here are eight worth carrying around, each with a line of introduction to hand you the door.
Eight sonnets, read closely
The running argument of the sequence is a fight with time: it ruins summers, faces, and empires, and verse is the only weapon that has ever won a round. These eight give you that fight, two low moments and their recoveries, and the two most quoted definitions of love in English.
18 · Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
The most famous opening question in English. The comparison fails on purpose: summer fades, and the poem is built to outlast it. The last two lines state the wager plainly, and so far they have won.
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.
29 · When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
Envy, shame, and self-pity, catalogued honestly for eight lines. Then one remembered person reverses everything. The turn at the lark is one of the great mood swings in poetry.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyesI 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 my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom 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.
30 · When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
Grief kept like an account book: old losses summoned to court and paid again in full. Thinking of one friend closes every account. Where 29 turns on joy, this one turns on restoration.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI 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, unused to flow,For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,And heavily from woe to woe tell o’erThe 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.
60 · Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
Minutes replace each other like waves on shingle, and time mows down whatever it first made lovely. Against all that, the couplet enters one defiant hope.
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end;Each changing place with that which goes before,In sequent toil all forwards do contend.Nativity, once in the main of light,Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.Time doth transfix the flourish set on youthAnd delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
65 · Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
If brass, stone, earth, and ocean all lose to time, what chance does beauty have? None, the poem admits, unless a miracle holds, and the miracle it names is black ink.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,But sad mortality o’ersways their power,How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,Whose action is no stronger than a flower?O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,Against the wrackful siege of battering days,When rocks impregnable are not so stout,Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?O fearful meditation! where, alack,Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O! none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
73 · That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Three images for growing old: bare autumn branches, fading twilight, a fire down to its embers. Then a quiet last line about loving well what you must leave.
That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon 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 fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by. This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
116 · Let me not to the marriage of true minds
The sonnet read at weddings, and stranger than its reputation. It defines love almost entirely by what love is not and never does, then stakes the whole claim on its own correctness.
Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich 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 cheeksWithin 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 prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
130 · My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
A demolition of overblown love-poem comparisons, one cliche at a time. The couplet lands it as a real compliment: she needs no false ones.
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 delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat 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.