William Shakespeare Poetry

SONNET #1
by: William Shakespeare

ROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's 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,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thout that are now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in
niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.


Shakespeare's 'Sonnet #1' was originally
published in Shake-speares Sonnets: Never before Imprinted (1609).


SONNET #2
by: William Shakespeare

WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tottered 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 prasie deserved thy
beauty's 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 feel'st cold.


Shakespeare's 'Sonnet #2' was originally published in Shake-speares Sonnets: Never before Imprinted (1609).