Timeless Love in Shakespearean Sonnets

Sonnet 18 Sonnet 29

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: I all alone beweep my outcast state,
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; cries,
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And look upon myself and curse my fate,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
And every fair from fair sometime declines, Featured like him, like him with friends
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd; possessed,
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; With what I most enjoy contented least;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, (Like to the lark at break of day arising
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s
gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such
wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with
kings.

Sonnet 30 Sonnet 55

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought Not marble nor the gilded monuments
I summon up remembrance of things past, Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, But you shall shine more bright in these
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: contents
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow, Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, time.
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight; And broils root out the work of masonry,
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er burn
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, The living record of your memory.
Which I new pay as if not paid before. ’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end. room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Sonnet 73 Sonnet 104

That time of year thou mayst in me behold To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. cold
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day Have from the forests shook three summers’
As after sunset fadeth in the west, pride,
Which by and by black night doth take away, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. turned
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire In process of the seasons have I seen,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
strong, So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Sonnet 116 Sonnet 123

Let me not to the marriage of true minds No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Admit impediments; love is not love Thy pyramids built up with newer might
Which alters when it alteration finds, To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
Or bends with the remover to remove. They are but dressings of a former sight.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
It is the star to every wand'ring bark And rather make them born to our desire
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be Than think that we before have heard them
taken. told.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Within his bending sickle's compass come. Not wondering at the present nor the past;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, For thy records and what we see doth lie,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: Made more or less by that continual haste.
If this be error and upon me proved, This I do vow, and this shall ever be:
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

Sonnet 130 Sonnet 138

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; When my love swears that she is made of truth,
Coral is far more red than her lips' red; I do believe her, though I know she lies,
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; That she might think me some untutored youth,
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white, Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks; Although she knows my days are past the best,
And in some perfumes is there more delight Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
That music hath a far more pleasing sound; And wherefore say not I that I am old?
I grant I never saw a goddess go; Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And age in love loves not to have years told.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
As any she belied with false compare. And in our faults by lies we flattered be.