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Shakespeare Poems Part I

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was an English playwright and poet, generally regarded as the greatest writer of all time in the English language. He was a prolific writer, penning 38 plays and 154 sonnets in his lifetime. Shakespeare could be considered an expert on the subject of love, having produced some of the greatest love stories ever told. Could any wedding ceremony be complete without a statement of romantic love from the Bard himself?

Shakespeare’s sonnets are poems of fourteen lines, written with a specific rhythm called iambic pentameter. Their themes include time, love, beauty and immortality. Here, we provide you with a collection of Shakespeare’s most beautiful and well-known love sonnets…

Love Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

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 thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st 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.

Sonnet 18 is one of the best known of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets and in it, he compares his love to the beauty and warmth of summer, arguing that she is better.

Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune

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 scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings’.

The theme of this sonnet is the restorative and curative powers of love for the man who has fallen on hard times or who has struggled to overcome life’s challenges.

Sonnet 46: Mine Eye and Heart are at a Mortal War

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierc’d with crystal eyes
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To side this title is impannelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part:
As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part,
And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart.

Sonnet 46 makes use of legal jargon and is rich in legal imagery; making it an excellent choice for brides and grooms in the legal profession! It’s central theme is the conflict between what the poet sees and feels In his heart; while his heart years for emotional love, his eyes are fixated on physical beauty. The poet expresses his love for the object of his affection, finally acknowledging the superior ‘inward’ love of the heart.

Love Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Many scholars agree that Love Sonnet 55 is about time and immortalization; particularly how the love the poet feels for his sweetheart will be forever immortal; it will outlast any monuments built of stone or marble, indeed death itself.

Love Sonnet 63: Against My Love Shall Be, As I Am Now

Against my love shall be as I am now,
With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn;
When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travelled on to age’s steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.

This sonnet deals with themes of the inevitability of ageing; however, argues the poet, although his love’s physical beauty may alter, his love will not and, through the birth of their children, that beauty will be passed on…