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Poetry · Poem

Sweet-and-Twenty

William ShakespeareEnglish RenaissancePoem
SOURCE TEXT · English original
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear! your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty!
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
Cultural reading

Reading the poem

A singer asks his roaming mistress to stay and hear her true love, then argues that mirth and kisses belong to the present because what is to come is unsure and youth will not endure.

Language notes

Text and edition

The English text follows the fixed historical witness in The Oxford Book of English Verse; no modern third-party translation is included.