• Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
    How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
    Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,
    My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
    My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
    A closet never pierc’d with crystal eyes
    But the defendant doth that plea deny,
    And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
    To side...

  • That time of year thou mayst in me behold
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
    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 day
    As 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 faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
    For they in thee a thousand errors note;
    But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,
    Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.
    Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted;
    Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
    Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
    To any sensual feast with thee alone:
    ...

  • Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep:
    A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,
    And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
    In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
    Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love,
    A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
    And grew a seeting bath, which yet men prove
    Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
    But at my...

  • 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 worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
    Love's not Time's fool,...

  • 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 dimmed;
    And every fair from fair sometime declines,
    By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;
    But...

  • 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 damasked, 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.
    ...

  • Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle;
    Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty;
    Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle;
    Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty:
    A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her,
    None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

    Her lips to mine how often hath she join’d,
    Between each kiss her oaths of true...

  • O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
    O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
    That can sing both high and low;
    Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
    Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—
    Every wise man’s son doth know.

    What is love? ‘tis not hereafter;
    Present mirth hath present laughter;
    What’s to come is still unsure:
    In delay there lies no plenty,—...

  • To me, fair friend, you never can be old
    For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
    Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
    Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
    Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
    In process of the seasons I have seen,
    Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
    Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are...