Sonnet CXXX: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare
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 damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And […]
Sonnet CXXX by William Shakespeare
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 damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And […]
Winter by William Shakespeare
When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When Blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When […]
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare
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 […]
When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare
When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came to man’s estate, With hey, ho, . . . ‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate For the rain, […]
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29) by William Shakespeare
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s […]
Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty; Who doth the world so gloriously behold That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish’d gold. Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow; “O thou clear god, […]
Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare
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 pleas’d […]
Three Songs by William Shakespeare
Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d,– The wild waves whist– Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. Hark, hark! Bow, wow, The watch-dogs bark: Bow, wow. Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow! –from The Tempest Tell […]
The Quality of Mercy by William Shakespeare
The quality of mercy is not strain’d. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown. His scepter shows the force of temporal power, The […]
The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare
Let the bird of loudest lay, On the sole Arabian tree, Herald sad and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey. But thou, shrieking harbinger, Foul pre-currer of the fiend, Augur of the fever’s end, To this troop come thou not near. From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, […]
Spring in New Hampshire by William Shakespeare
Too green the springing April grass, Too blue the silver-speckled sky, For me to linger here, alas, While happy winds go laughing by, Wasting the golden hours indoors, Washing windows and scrubbing floors. Too wonderful the April night, Too faintly sweet the first May flowers, The stars too gloriously bright, For me to spend the […]
Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
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 wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]
Sonnet LXXI by William Shakespeare
No longer mourn for me when I am dead Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so That I […]
Sonnet LXX by William Shakespeare
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair; The ornament of beauty is suspect, A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve Thy worth the greater, being woo’d of time; For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, […]
Sonnet LXVII by William Shakespeare
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before the 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; […]
Sonnet LXVI by William Shakespeare
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 guilded 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 […]
Sonnet LXV by William Shakespeare
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways 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 […]
Sonnet LXIX by William Shakespeare
Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown’d; But those same tongues that give thee so thine own […]
Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defac’d by William Shakespeare
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main, […]
Sonnet LXIV by William Shakespeare
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, […]
Sonnet LXIII by William Shakespeare
Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’er-worn; When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night, And all those beauties whereof now he’s king Are vanishing or vanish’d out of […]
Sonnet LXII by William Shakespeare
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye And all my soul and all my every part; And for this sin there is no remedy, It is so grounded inward in my heart. Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, No shape so true, no truth of such account; And for myself mine own worth […]
Sonnet LXI by William Shakespeare
Is it thy will thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames […]
To the Fringed Gentian by William Cullen Bryant
To the Fringed Gentian by William Cullen Bryant Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven’s own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden […]
To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant
To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler’s eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats […]
To A Cloud by William Cullen Bryant
To A Cloud by William Cullen Bryant Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair, Swimming in the pure quiet air! Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below Thy shadow o’er the vale moves slow; Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train As cool it comes along the grain. Beautiful cloud! I would I […]
The Yellow Violet by William Cullen Bryant
The Yellow Violet by William Cullen Bryant When beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the blue-bird’s warble know, The yellow violet’s modest bell Peeps from last-year’s leaves below. Ere russet fields their green resume, Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare, To meet thee, when thy faint perfume Alone is in the virgin air. […]
The West Wind by William Cullen Bryant
The West Wind by William Cullen Bryant Beneath the forest’s skirts I rest, Whose branching pines rise dark and high, And hear the breezes of the West Among the threaded foliage sigh. Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of wo? Is not thy Home among the flowers? Do not the bright June roses blow, To meet […]
The Strange Lady by William Cullen Bryant
The Strange Lady by William Cullen Bryant The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by, As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool dear sky; Young Albert, in the forest’s edge, has heard a rustling sound An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground. […]
The Skies by William Cullen Bryant
The Skies by William Cullen Bryant Ay! gloriously thou standest there, Beautiful, boundless firmament! That swelling wide o’er earth and air, And round the horizon bent, With thy bright vault, and sapphire wall, Dost overhang and circle all. Far, far below thee, tall old trees Arise, and piles built up of old, And hills, whose […]
The Living Lost by William Cullen Bryant
The Living Lost by William Cullen Bryant Matron! the Children of whose love, Each to his grave, in youth have passed, And now the mould is heaped above The dearest and the last! Bride! who dost wear the widow’s veil Before the Wedding flowers are pale! Ye deem the human heart endures No deeper, bitterer […]
The Gladness of Nature by William Cullen Bryant
The Gladness of Nature by William Cullen Bryant Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all […]
The Death of the Flowers by William Cullen Bryant
The Death of the Flowers by William Cullen Bryant The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread; The robin […]
The Death of Lincoln by William Cullen Bryant
The Death of Lincoln by William Cullen Bryant Oh, slow to smit and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword of power, a nation’s trust! In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that hushes all, And speak the anguish of a […]
The Constellations by William Cullen Bryant
The Constellations by William Cullen Bryant O constellations of the early night, That sparkled brighter as the twilight died, And made the darkness glorious! I have seen Your rays grow dim upon the horizon’s edge, And sink behind the mountains. I have seen The great Orion, with his jewelled belt, That large-limbed warrior of the […]
Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant
Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant To him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy that […]
Summer Wind by William Cullen Bryant
Summer Wind by William Cullen Bryant It is a sultry day; the sun has drank The dew that lay upon the morning grass, There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on […]
Spring in Town by William Cullen Bryant
Spring in Town by William Cullen Bryant The country ever has a lagging Spring, Waiting for May to call its violets forth, And June its roses–showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o’er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back. Within the […]
October by William Cullen Bryant
October by William Cullen Bryant Ay, thou art welcome, heaven’s delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the […]