Shakespearian Sonnets

Sonnets are type of poem that have several restrictions. A sonnet must be fourteen lines long, a particular rhyme scheme and stanza structure.

While there are two main types of sonnets, many have done other variations over the years. The Shakespearian Sonnet has three four line stanzas and one concluding couplet. The rhyme is : abab cdcd efef gg.

Generally, a problem is presented in the first section, refined in the next two, and then resolved in the conclusin.

CXXX

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.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,

As any she belied with false compare.

CXXXVIII

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love, loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

CXXIX

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action: and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

XXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds

              1Let me not to the marriage of true minds

              2Admit impediments. Love is not love

              3Which alters when it alteration finds,

              4Or bends with the remover to remove.

              5O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

              6That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

              7It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

              8Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

              9Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

            10Within his bending sickle's compass come;

            11Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

            12But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

            13If this be error and upon me prov'd,

            14I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.