When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyesI 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 my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.
William Shakespeare · Shakespeare's Sonnets
Love & longing
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”
- Author
- William Shakespeare
- Work
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- Year
- 1609
- Chapter / part
- Sonnet XXIX
- Length
- 115 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #1041
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. William Shakespeare died in 1616, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1609. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
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I count myself in nothing else so happyAs in a soul rememb’ring my good friends;And as my fortune ripens with thy love,It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.
Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
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Passage page · Read the full text
Passage page · Read the full text
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.
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