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,

Featur’d 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.

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 wandering 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 prov’d,

  I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

MY mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go,—

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

  As any she belied with false compare.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent

  Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

  And that one Talent which is death to hide

  Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

  My true account, lest He returning chide,

  “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

  I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

  Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best

  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

  And post o’er land and ocean without rest;

  They also serve who only stand and wait.”

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charact’ry,

  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,

  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

  That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

  Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.