Sonnet 9 by William Shakespeare

SONNET IX by William Shakespeare

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye
That thou consum’st thyself in single life?
Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife; 

The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep,
By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind.

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,
And, kept unused, the user so destroys it.

No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

Sonnet 8 By William Shakespeare

Sonnet VIII by William Shakespeare

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,
Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.”

Sonnet 7 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet VII by William Shakespeare

Lo, in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

But when from highmost pitch with weary car
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract and look another way.

So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

Shakespeare Sonnet V

Sonnet V by William Shakespeare

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

Will play the tyrants to the very same

And that unfair which fairly doth excel:

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there;

Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:

Then, were not summer's distillation left,

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Shakespeare Sonnet IV

Sonnet IV by William Shakespeare

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

And being frank she lends to those are free.

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,

Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

Shakespeare Sonnet I

Sonnet I

  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,
  Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

  Thou that art 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.