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William Shakespeare 1564-1616

Born Stratford-on-Avon, England

 

Poet

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)

 

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 dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.

    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 

All the World's a Stage

 

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

 

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember'd not.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.

 

Sonnet 1

 

From 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.

 

 

Sonnet 2

 

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.

 

Three Witches from Macbeth

 

Round about the cauldron go;   

In the poison’d entrails throw.   

Toad, that under cold stone    

Days and nights hast thirty one   

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,   

Boil thou first I’ the charmed pot.   

 

     Double, double toil and trouble;

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.   

 

Fillet of a fenny snake,   

In the cauldron boil and bake;   

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,   

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,   

Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,   

Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,   

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.   

 

     Double, double toil and trouble;   

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  

 

Sonnet 3

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

 Now is the time that face should form another,

 Whose fresh repair if now thou renewest,

 Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

 For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

 Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

 Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

 Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

 Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee

 Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

 So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

 Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

 But if thou live rememb'red not to be,

 Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

 

 

Sonnet 40

                                       Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:

 What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

 No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

 All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

 Then, if for my love thou my love receivest,

 I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;

 But yet be blamed if thou this self deceivest

 By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

 I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle theif,

 Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

 And yet love knows it is a greater grief

 To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

 Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

 Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.