Search：William Shakespeare
Full fathom five thy father lies
A sea song transforms a drowned father into coral and pearl, turning death into a rich and strange change sounded by a ritual knell.
YOU spotted snakes with double tongue
Fairies warn snakes, hedgehogs, spiders, beetles and snails away from their sleeping queen, with a sung lullaby refrain answering each set of warnings.
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？
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.
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.
WHEN icicles hang by the wall
Winter cold, frozen milk, foul roads, wind and coughing are set against the owl's nightly cry, which the refrain calls a merry note while Joan keels the pot.
WHEN daisies pied and violets blue
Spring flowers, shepherds' pipes, mating birds and bleaching maidens fill the fields while the cuckoo's repeated call is heard as mockery of married men.
SHALL I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
The speaker asks whether to compare the beloved to a summer day, finds the beloved more lovely and temperate than summer’s brief and changeable beauty, and promises that these enduring lines will preserve that beauty and life as long as people can breathe or see.
Dirge
A speaker who says he has been slain by a cruel beloved calls on death to come, orders his own shroud and coffin, and asks to be buried where no flower, friend or grieving lover can ever find the grave.
It was a Lover and his Lass
Across four refrain-bound stanzas, a pair of lovers crossing the green corn-fields and rye is described singing a carol that life is but a flower and that the present time should be taken.
COME unto these yellow sands
A singer calls dancers to take hands and foot it on the sands while the waves fall silent, then breaks off to listen to barking watch-dogs and a crowing cock.
Love
The song asks where fancy is bred, answers that it is engendered in the eyes and fed with gazing, and rings its knell as it dies in the cradle where it lies.
Sweet-and-Twenty
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.
The Blossom
Love spies a blossom stirred by the wind, the lover envies the air that touches it, and he pleads that breaking his sworn vow for her should not be counted a sin.