The Sonnets

Some of Shakespeare's most powerful and deep sonnets ...

When in disgrace with fortune and mens eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me luck to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possesed,
Desiring this man's art, and that mans scope
With what i most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply i think on thee- and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings
That then i scorn to change my state with Kings.

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love.
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no ! it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on the tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unkown, although his heights be taken.
Loves not times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
if this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.