Young Love

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

Tell me where is Fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
                   Reply, reply.

It is engender'd in the eyes;
With gazing fed; and Fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies:
Let us all ring Fancy's knell;
I'll begin it, --Ding, dong, bell.
                 --Ding, dong, bell.

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

  Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
  Thou art not so unkind
  As man's ingratitude
  Thy tooth is not so keen
  Because thou art not see,
  Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
  Then, heigh ho! the holly!
  This life is most jolly.

  Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
  Thou dost not bite so nigh
  As benefits forgot:
  Though thou the water warp,
  Thy sting is not so sharp
  As friend remember'd not.
Heigh ho! hiegh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
  Then, heigh ho! the holly!
  This life is most jolly.

Carpe Diem

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

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,--
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
  Youth's a stuff will not endure.

Love's Perjuries

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

On a day, alack the day!
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me
That I am forsworn for thee:
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were,
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.

Under The Greenwood Tree

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

  Under the greenwood tree
  Who loves to lie with me,
  And turn his merry note
  Unto the sweet bird's throat --
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
  Here shall he see
  No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

  Who doth ambition shun
  And loves to live i'the sun,
  Seeking the food he eats
  And pleased with what he gets --
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
  Here shall he see
  No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

The World's Way

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry --
  As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
  And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded 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 captive Good attending captain Ill:--

-- Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my Love alone.

The Life Without Passion

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
  That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as store,
  Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, --

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
  And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
  Others, but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
  Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
  The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

True Love

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

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, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But  bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom:--

If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

To His Love

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

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 thous owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:--

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

That time of year thou may'st in me behold

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)
That time of year thou may'st 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 thous see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-an-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,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by:

-- This thous perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Revolutions

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

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 youth,
And 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.

Since Brass, Nor stone

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)
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 wreckful 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.

Cupid and Campaspe

By John Lyly (1554 ~ 1606)
Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid:
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how);
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple on his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win:
And last he set her both his eyes-
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
  O Love! has she done this to thee?
  What shall, alas! become of me?

One day I wrote her name upon the stand...

By Edmund Spenser(1553~1599)
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
but came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Vain man, said she, that does in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.

Not so, (quod I) let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

It is most true...

By Sir Philip Sydney (1554~1586)
It is most true that eyes are form’d to serve
The inward light and that the heavenly part
Ought to be King, from whose rules who do swerve,
Rebels to nature, strive for their own smart.

It is most true, that what we call Cupid’s dart
An image is, which for ourselves we carve,
And, fools, adore, in temple of our heart,
Till that good god make church and churchmen
starve.

True, that true beauty virtue is indeed,
Whereof this beauty can be but a shade,
Which elements with mortal mixture breed.
True that on earth we are but pilgrims made,

And should in soul up to our country move:
True, and yet true that I must Stella love.

Loving in truth...

By Sir Philip Sydney (1554~1586)
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of
  my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make
  her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned
  brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's
  stay;

Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's
  blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my
  way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my
  throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and
  write.'

Epigram on Milton

John Dryden
Three Poets, in three distant Ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The First in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The Next in Majesty; in both the Last.
The force of Nature could no farther go:
To make a third she joined the former two.

A Supplication

Abraham Cowley

Awake, awake, my Lyre!
And tell thy silent master's humble tale
In sounds that may prevail;
Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:
Though so exalted she
And I so lowly be
Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

Hark! how the strings awake:
And, though the moving hand approach not near,
Themselves with awful fear
A kind of numerous trembling make.
Now all thy forces try;
Now all thy charms apply;
Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak Lyre! thy virtue sure
Is useless here, since thou art only found
To cure, but not to wound,
And she to wound, but not to cure.
Too weak too wilt thou prove
My passion to remove;
Physic to other ills, thou'rt nourishment to Love.

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre!
For thou canst never tell my humble tale
In sounds that will prevail,
Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;
All thy vain mirth lay by,
Bid thy strings silent lie,
Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre, and let thy master die.

Song

By John Donne (1572 - 1631)

(Any suggestion as to improve my pronunciation will be most welcomed.)
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

A Supplication

(Any feedback on improving the accent will be most welcomed).

Text:

Forget not yet the tried intent
Of such a truth as I have meant;
My great travail so gladly spent,

Forget not yet!

Forget not yet when first began
The weary life ye know, since whan
The suit, the service none tell can;

Forget not yet!

Forget not yet when the great assays,
The cruel wrong, the scornful ways,
The painful patience in delays,

Forget not yet!

Forget not! O, forget not this,
How long ago hath been, and is
The mind that never meant amiss-

Forget not yet!

Forget not then thine own approved
The which so long hath thee so loved,
Whose steadfast faith yet never moved-

Forget not this!