诗 · CONTENT CATEGORY
World poetry
Read poetry across languages and traditions, with authors, source editions and reviewed translations kept distinct.
136 reviewed public itemsA Birthday
The speaker likens a heart at the coming of love to a singing bird, a fruit-laden apple tree and a rainbow shell on a calm sea, then calls for a dais worked in silk, gold, doves and pomegranates because this day is the birthday of a life.
Song
Speaking to a lover about their own death, the speaker asks for no sad songs, roses or cypress but only green grass wet with showers and dew, and imagines a twilight afterwards in which they may equally happen to remember or to forget.
Uphill
A question-and-answer journey climbs all day toward an inn at night, where the door will open and every traveller will find a bed.
Passing Away
Three voices in turn—the World, the speaker's Soul, and God—declare that all things are passing away, and to each the speaker answers 'Yea', the last voice turning the refrain from decay toward winter's end, new fruit and a coming that must be waited for.
Remember
A request to be remembered turns into permission to forget, placing the survivor’s freedom from grief above the speaker’s own memorial claim.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
A meditation on beauty, time, and poetry’s claim to preserve the beloved beyond summer and death.
Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
A meditation on memory as a legal reckoning in which old losses are counted again and friendship restores what grief consumed.
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
A meditation on ageing through late autumn, twilight, and dying fire, ending with love intensified by approaching loss.
Sonnet 10
The complete text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 10 from the 1609 first edition, with early spelling and provenance.
Sonnet 6
The complete text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 6 from the 1609 first edition, with early spelling and provenance.
Sonnet 1
Original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1 from the 1609 first edition, with source information.
Sonnet 3
Original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3 from the 1609 first edition, with source information.
Sonnet 4
Original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 4 from the 1609 first edition, with source information.
Sonnet 5
Original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5 from the 1609 first edition, with source information.
Sonnet 9
Original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 9 from the 1609 first edition, with source information.
Sonnet 2
The complete text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2 from the 1609 first edition, with early spelling and provenance.