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Love is too young to know what conscience is (Sonnet 151)

by | Dec 9, 2025 | Poems, Shakespeare sonnets, William Shakespeare

Love is too young to know what conscience is (Sonnet 151)

William Shakespeare

1564 – 1616

Love is too young to know what conscience is;
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason;
But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her ‘love’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.

About

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist

The little love-god lying once asleep (Sonnet 154) by William Shakespeare

O me what eyes hath Love put in my head (Sonnet 148)

by | Dec 9, 2025 | Poems, Shakespeare sonnets, William Shakespeare

O me what eyes hath Love put in my head (Sonnet 148)

William Shakespeare

1564 – 1616

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
Or, if the have, where is my judgement fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s ‘No.’
How can it? O, how can Love’s eye be true,
That is so vex’d with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind.
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

About

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist

The little love-god lying once asleep (Sonnet 154) by William Shakespeare

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep (Sonnet 153)

by | Dec 9, 2025 | Poems, Shakespeare sonnets, William Shakespeare

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep (Sonnet 153)

William Shakespeare

1564 – 1616

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest,
But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire—my mistress’ eyes.

About

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist

The little love-god lying once asleep (Sonnet 154) by William Shakespeare

The little love-god lying once asleep (Sonnet 154)

by | Dec 9, 2025 | Poems, Shakespeare sonnets, William Shakespeare

The little love-god lying once asleep (Sonnet 154) by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

1564 – 1616

The little love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;
And so the general of hot desire
What sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

About

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist

The little love-god lying once asleep (Sonnet 154) by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old

by | Nov 6, 2025 | Friendship Poems, Male Poets, Poems, Poetry, Poets

Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old

By William Shakespeare

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

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