The Sonnets LIV - O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses.
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summers breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwood, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. Known as the 'Bard of Avon,' his extant works include approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

William Shakespeare

The Sonnets CLI - Love is too young to know what conscience is

William Shakespeare, Simple Poetry

The Sonnets CXXVIII - How oft when thou, my music, music playst

William Shakespeare, Simple Poetry

The Sonnets CVI - When in the chronicle of wasted time

William Shakespeare, Simple Poetry

The Sonnets CXXXI - Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art

William Shakespeare, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Sonnets XCV - How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
O! what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beautys veil doth cover every blot
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife ill-usd doth lose his edge.

William Shakespeare

The Sonnets LXVIII - Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head;
Ere beautys dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of anothers green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

William Shakespeare

The Sonnets I - From fairest creatures we desire increase

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beautys rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feedst thy lights flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl makst waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the worlds due, by the grave and thee.

William Shakespeare

The Sonnets II - When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beautys field,
Thy youths proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatterd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deservd thy beautys use,
If thou couldst answer This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feelst it cold.

William Shakespeare

The Sonnets XXI - So is it not with me as with that Muse

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirrd by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare,
With sun and moon, with earth and seas rich gems,
With Aprils first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heavens air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mothers child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixd in heavens air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

William Shakespeare

The Sonnets V - Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty oer-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summers distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beautys effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distilld, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

William Shakespeare