Word on the street (and the English wing of your high school campus) is that William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Among other things about which I was a little skeptical in literature classes, this number is one of them.
Personally, I think he wrote several hundred more.
If you’ve ever tried to write a sonnet, you know that more often than not, it doesn’t come out right the first time. Odds are you will at least tinker with it, but more likely there’s a pile of discarded wads of crumpled paper around your wool-stocking’d feet under your writing desk before you ever get to the one that you’ll actually let a person read.
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets that were published and have survived into perpetuity. And that’s 154 sonnets that are so good that a lot of modern day sonneteers try to imitate them.
The traditional Shakespearean Sonnet form has 14 lines comprised of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and one rhyming couplet (two-line stanza). The poem is written in iambic pentameter, meaning each line has 10 syllables with the stress falling on the second syllable of each pair.
Of those 154 surviving poems, we’ve collected 10 of the best Shakespeare sonnets for you to enjoy. Do you have a favorite that is not on the list? Share it with us in the comments.
1. Sonnet 106
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 look’d but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Had eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
2. Sonnet 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
3. Sonnet 98
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 odour and in hue
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where 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.
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4. Sonnet 29
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.
5. Sonnet 24
Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And perspective it is the painter’s art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictured lies;
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
6. Sonnet 134
So, now I have confess’d that he is thine,
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,
Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still:
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous and he is kind;
He learn’d but surety-like to write for me
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
Thou usurer, that put’st forth all to use,
And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:
He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
7. Sonnet 18
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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
8. Sonnet 116
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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
9. Sonnet 130
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.
10. Sonnet 104
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.
Photo by David Goehring, Creative Commons license via Flickr.
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Will Willingham
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dan says
of course your page came just in time as i was invited to write a dedication on a card to newlyweds. sonnet 116 is a classic so smooth and straightforward as it is. Thanks.
Carine says
Sonnet 18 is lovely.
jeff says
nope
L.L. Barkat says
Jeff, thanks for commenting. 🙂 We appreciate alternate viewpoints, always! But we also find it helpful if you can express your thinking on a matter in a way that brings understanding. To this, is there a reason you don’t prefer sonnet 18?
L Ball says
Then why is sonnet 18 lovely?????
L.L. Barkat says
“Lovely” was a word Carine used. 🙂 I can’t really speak for what was on her mind when she said that.
I do like the sonnet, though. It’s a bit mischievous, asking “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (which was a common type of comparison other poets of the time might have made—so he’s sort of saying, “Shall I be cliché?”). It’s also a bit audacious, promising to make the beloved eternal, by virtue of poetry…
“When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
However, the boldness of the promise seems to have been somewhat warranted. After all, we are still reading the sonnet, and the beloved is still remembered, at least a little, by being featured in it. 🙂
GVV says
Missed the Sonnet “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought” in the above list
Afra seyab says
Why some shakespear sonnets are most comman??? Plzz ans me
Marvin says
Sonnet 130 is lovely.)
Lou. says
Sonnet 27 one of my favourites. Or in modern words: I didn’t sleep last night because I was thinking of you.