Shakespeares Sonnets

Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you, Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy, To make of monsters and things indigest Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, Creating every bad a perfect best, As fast as objects to his beams assemble? O! ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing, And my great mind most kingly drinks it up: Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ‘greeing, And to his palate doth prepare the cup: If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 114: Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind; And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out; For it no form delivers to the heart Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch: Of his quick objects hath the mind no part, Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch; For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight, The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature, The mountain or the sea, the day or night, The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature. Incapable of more, replete with you, My most true mind thus maketh mine eye untrue. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 113: Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Your love and pity doth the impression fill, Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow? You are my all-the-world, and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue; None else to me, nor I to none alive, That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong. In so profound abysm I throw all care Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense To critic and to flatterer stopped are. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: You are so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the world besides methinks y’are dead. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth the impression fill appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed; Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eisell ‘gainst my strong infection; No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction. Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye, Even that your pity is enough to cure me. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 111: O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there, And made my self a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new; Most true it is, that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely; but, by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth, And worse essays proved thee my best of love. Now all is done, have what shall have no end: Mine appetite I never more will grind On newer proof, to try an older friend, A god in love, to whom I am confined. Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Even to thy pure and most most loving breast. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 110: Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

O! never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify, As easy might I from my self depart As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have ranged, Like him that travels, I return again; Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, So that myself bring water for my stain. Never believe though in my nature reigned, All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 109: O! never say that I was false of heart appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

What’s in the brain that ink may character, Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? What’s new to speak, what now to register, That may express my love, or thy dear merit? Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine, I must each day say o’er the very same; Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name. So that eternal love in love’s fresh case, Weighs not the dust and injury of age, Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, But makes antiquity for aye his page; Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 108: What’s in the brain that ink may character appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time, My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes: And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 107: Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express’d Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Let not my love be called idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone, Which three till now, never kept seat in one. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d, In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d, 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 perceiv’d; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d: For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside! O! blame me not, if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a face That over-goes my blunt invention quite, Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, To mar the subject that before was well? For to no other pass my verses tend Than of your graces and your gifts to tell; And more, much more, than in my verse can sit, Your own glass shows you when you look in it. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 103: Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear; That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming, The owner’s tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays; As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days: Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue: Because I would not dull you with my song. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 102: My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed? Both truth and beauty on my love depends; So dost thou too, and therein dignified. Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say, ‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fixed; Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay; But best is best, if never intermixed’? Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee To make him much outlive a gilded tomb And to be praised of ages yet to be. Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how To make him seem, long hence, as he shows now. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 101: O truant Muse what shall be thy amends appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song, Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem In gentle numbers time so idly spent; Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem And gives thy pen both skill and argument. Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey, If Time have any wrinkle graven there; If any, be a satire to decay, And make Time’s spoils despised every where. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life; So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 100: Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love’s breath? Thy purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed. The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair: The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or color it had stol’n from thee. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 099: The forward violet thus did I chide appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trim Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hue Could make me any summer’s story tell. Or from their proud lap pluck them while they grew; Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight; Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 098: From you have I been absent in the spring appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness every where! And yet this time removed was summer’s time The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease: Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And, thou away, the very birds are mute: Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 097: How like a winter hath my absence been appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are lov’d of more and less: Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteem’d, So are those errors that in thee are seen To truths translated, and for true things deem’d. How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers mightst thou lead away, If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! But do not so; I love thee in such sort, As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 096: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose. That tongue that tells the story of thy days, Making lascivious comments on thy sport, Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise; Naming thy name blesses an ill report. O! what a mansion have those vices got Which for their habitation chose out thee, Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot And all things turns to fair that eyes can see! Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge. William Shakespeare Presenters Mark Chatterley Thierry Heles The post Sonnet 95: How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame appeared first on In Ear Entertainment.