154 Poems
The Sonnets
Two subjects: a beautiful young man, a dark-haired woman. Time, desire, jealousy, praise, and self-loathing — all in fourteen lines.
Fair Youth (Procreation)
Urging the young man to have children so his beauty survives.
Fair Youth (Friendship & Time)
Poetry as immortality. Shakespeare's sustained argument against time.
18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
31
32
33
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
56
57
58
59
60
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
61
62
63
64
65
66
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry
67
68
69
70
71
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
72
73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
74
75
76
77
Fair Youth (Rival Poet & Estrangement)
Jealousy, absence, betrayal, and the closing envoy.
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
They that have power to hurt and will do none
95
96
97
How like a winter hath my absence been
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
When in the chronicle of wasted time
107
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
Dark Lady
A darker, more erotic sequence. Lust, self-disgust, and paradox.
127
128
129
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
When my love swears that she is made of truth
139
140
141
142
143
144
Two loves I have of comfort and despair
145
146
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154