Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (92 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
HARK! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phœbus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
5
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise!
Arise, arise!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
COME away, come away, Death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
5
O prepare it!
My part of death no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
10
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown;
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
15
To weep there.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
FEAR no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
5
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great,
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
10
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
15
Thou hast finish’d joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
20
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
FULL fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
5
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them, —
Ding, dong, bell.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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,
5
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;
10
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest 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.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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,
5
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
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,
10
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.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
5
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
10
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
THY bosom is endearèd with all hearts
Which I, by lacking, have supposèd dead:
And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought burièd.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
5
Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead! — which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie.
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
10
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
IF thou survive my well-contented day
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceaséd lover;
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
5
And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought —
‘Had my friend’s muse grown with this growing age,
10
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
FULL many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
5
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
10
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region-cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
O HOW much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The Canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
5
As the perfumèd tincture of the Roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses;
But — for their virtue only is their show —
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade,
10
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order