The simple pouring out of passion is apt to become tiresome to all save the lover and the beloved; but in reading Shakespeare's sonnets we are sensible of no such loss of gusto. (J. A. Noble, 1880)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18)
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's 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 like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's 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 remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
(Sonnet 29)
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
(Sonnet 43)
The prize of all too precious you.
(Sonnet 86)
Such is my love, to thee I so belong
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
(Sonnet 88)
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 tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's 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.
(Sonnet 116)
'Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me.
(All's Well That Ends Well, 1.1.82-4)
The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.
(As You Like It, 3.4.54)
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor
But was a race of heaven.
(Antony and Cleopatra, 1.3.36-8)
If thou remember'st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
(As You Like It, 2.4.33-5)
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