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.

Dirge of Love

By William Shakespeare (1546 ~ 1616)

  Come away, come away, Death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
  Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
                  O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
                 Did share it.

  Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
  Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
                   Lay me, O where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
                   To weep there.

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.