Explore all content
Sonnet 10
The complete text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 10 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 2
The complete text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2 from the 1609 first edition, with early spelling and provenance.
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 6
The complete text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 6 from the 1609 first edition, with early spelling and provenance.
Sonnet 9
Original text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 9 from the 1609 first edition, with source information.
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.
十四行诗第七十三首：你在我身上看见暮秋
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.
十四行诗第三十首：当静思开庭
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.
十四行诗第十八首：我可否把你比作夏日？
The Indian Serenade
Waking from dreams of the beloved in the first sleep of night, the speaker is carried by some spirit to her chamber window, and after listening to the faint airs and the nightingale he collapses, begging to be lifted, kissed and pressed to her heart.
A Farewell to the World
The speaker bids a false world good night, recounts how it abused his early years and rewarded rumour, envy and ignorance, and resolves to bear age, sickness and misfortune with strengths kept at home rather than seek peace by wandering.
At a Solemn Musick
The poem calls on Voice and Verse to present the unbroken song sung before the heavenly throne, recalls how sin jarred against nature's chime, and asks that earthly voices be brought back into tune with heaven.
Hear the Voice
A summons to hear the Bard who has heard the Holy Word walking among ancient trees, followed by that Word's own call for the fallen Earth to rise and turn back before daybreak.
Blow blow, thou Winter Wind
Winter wind is less cruel than human ingratitude, while a bright holly refrain turns false friendship and foolish love into pointed irony.
Valedictory Sonnet to the River Duddon
Thinking of the river as something passed away, the speaker corrects himself: the stream still glides and will glide for ever while men must vanish, and he settles for the hope that what our hands leave behind can serve the future and that love, hope and faith make us greater than we know.
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, 1802
The sonnet recalls Venice as a free maiden city that held the East in fee and wedded the sea, then argues that even the fading shade of what was once great must be mourned.
On Time
Addressing Time as a devourer, the poem urges it to swallow all that is false until it consumes itself, after which eternity, truth, peace and love remain and the soul sits triumphing over Death, Chance and Time.
An Elegy
The poem turns from praising a lady's beauty to praising the virtue that binds her love to one, then addresses her as the deity who has rebuilt Love's fallen temples and asks a spark of her heat for the speaker's own unsatisfied love.
Written on Coming Home
I left home young and come back old; my home accent unchanged, the hair at my temples thinned. The children see me and do not know me; laughing, they ask where the guest has come from.
回乡偶书
ii Echo
A singer calls on the nymph Echo, lists the green and violet places where she may be hidden, and asks her to tell where a 'gentle Pair' has been concealed, promising her a place among the harmonies of heaven.
Under the Greenwood Tree
Two stanzas invite anyone who shuns ambition and is content with what he finds to join the singer in the forest, where the only enemy is rough weather, and a third stanza mockingly answers that whoever leaves wealth and ease for this is a fool.
Easter
The speaker gathers flowers and boughs to strew the Lord's way but finds Him already risen before daybreak with His own sweets, and concludes that a heart, though late, can still make this day the date of his life.