6 posts tagged “shakespeare”

But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockl'd snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair:
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. 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 not shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Loves 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 write nor no man ever loved.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines.
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade,
When in eternal lines top time thou growest,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see
So long live this, and this gives life to thee

No sooner met but they looked
No sooner looked but they loved
No sooner loved but they sighed
No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason
No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy

Doubt that the stars are fire

Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love thee

Geniuses of countless nations
Have told their love for generations
Till all their memorable phrases
Are common as goldenrod or daisies.
Their girls have glimmered like the moon,
Or shimmered like a summer moon,
Stood like a lily, fled like a fawn,
Now the sunset, now the dawn,
Here the princess in the tower
There the sweet forbidden flower.
Darling, when I look at you
Every aged phrase is new,
And there are moments when it seems
I've married one of Shakespeare's dreams.