In this article I am going to wander through time and share some of my favourite poems, starting with the man himself and all the way to the fantastic contemporary poet, Kaveh Akbar.

Note: if you love any of these poems, please go and check out the writers, buy a collection and support poets!

Best Poems for Actors

Shakespeare (1564)

Sonnet 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

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,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
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 remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

T.S. Eliot (1888)

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Emily Dickinson (1833)

I cannot live with You 

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die- with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – Could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had not more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

W.H Auden (1907)

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911)

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Dylan Thomas (1914)

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Philip Larkin (1922)

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

James Merrill (1926)

164 East 72nd Street

These city apartment windows — my grandmother’s once –
Must be replaced come Fall at great expense.
Pre-war sun shone through them on many a Saturday
Lunch unconsumed while frantic adolescence
Wheedled an old lady into hat and lipstick,
Into her mink, the taxi, the packed lobby,
Into our seats. Whereupon gold curtains parted
On Lakmé’s silvery, not yet broken-hearted
Version of things as they were. But what remains
Exactly as it was except those panes?
Today’s memo from the Tenants’ Committee deplores
Even the ongoing deterioration
Of the widows in our building. Well. On the bright side,
Heating costs and street noise will be cut.
Sirens at present like intergalactic gay
Bars in full swing whoop past us night and day.

Sometimes, shocked wide awake, I’ve tried to reckon
How many lives — fifty, a hundred thousand? —
Are being shortened by that din of crosstown
Ruby flares, wherever blinds don’t quite . . .
And shortened by how much? Ten minutes each?
Reaching the Emergency Room alive, the victim
Would still have to live years, just to repair
The sonic fallout of a single scare.

”Do you ever wonder where you’ll — ” Oh my dear,
Asleep somewhere, or at the wheel. Not here.
Within months of the bathroom ceiling’s cave-in,
Which missed my grandmother by a white hair,
She moved back South. The point’s to live in style,
Not to drop dead in it. On a carpet of flowers
Nine levels above ground, like Purgatory,
Our life is turning into a whole new story:

Juices, blue cornbread, afternoons at the gym –
Imagine who remembers how to swim!
Evenings of study, or intensive care
For one another. Early to bed. And later,
If the mirror’s drowsy eye perceives a slight
But brilliant altercation between curtains
Healed by the leaden hand of — one of us?
A white-haired ghost? or the homunculus

A gentle alchemist behind them trains
To put in order these nocturnal scenes –
Two heads already featureless in gloom
Have fallen back to sleep. Tomorrow finds me
Contentedly playing peekaboo with a sylphlike
Quirk in the old glass, making the brickwork
On the street’s far (bright) side ripple. Childhood’s view.
My grandmother — an easy-to-see-through

Widow by the time she died — made it my own.
Bless her good sense. Far from those parts of town
Given to high finance, or the smash hit and steak house,
Macy’s or crack, Saks or quick sex, this neighborhood
Saunters blandly forth, adjusting its clothing.
Things done in purple light before we met,
Uncultured things that twitched as on a slide
If thought about, fade like dreams. Two Upper East Side

Boys again! Rereading Sir Walter Scott
Or Through the Looking Glass, it’s impossible not
To feel how adult life, with its storms and follies,
Is letting up, leaving me ten years old,
Trustful, inventive, once more good as gold
— And counting on this to help, should a new spasm
Wake the gray sleeper, or to improve his chances
When ceilings flush with unheard ambulances.

Philip Levine (1928)

Burial Rites

Everyone comes back here to die
as I will soon. The place feels right
since it’s half dead to begin with.
Even on a rare morning of rain,
like this morning, with the low sky
hoarding its riches except for
a few mock tears, the hard ground
accepts nothing. Six years ago
I buried my mother’s ashes
beside a young lilac that’s now
taller than I, and stuck the stub
of a rosebush into her dirt,
where like everything else not
human it thrives. The small blossoms
never unfurl; whatever they know
they keep to themselves until
a morning rain or a night wind
pares the petals down to nothing.
Even the neighbor cat who shits
daily on the paths and then hides
deep in the jungle of the weeds
refuses to purr. Whatever’s here
is just here, and nowhere else,
so it’s right to end up beside
the woman who bore me, to shovel
into the dirt whatever’s left
and leave only a name for some-
one who wants it. Think of it,
my name, no longer a portion
of me, no longer inflated
or bruised, no longer stewing
in a rich compost of memory
or the simpler one of bone shards,
dirt, kitty litter, wood ashes,
the roots of the eucalyptus
I planted in ’73,
a tiny me taking nothing,
giving nothing, and free at last.

Sylvia Plath (1932)

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time–
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You–

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two–
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Kaveh Akbar (1989)

What use is knowing anything if no one is around

What use is knowing anything if no one is around
to watch you know it? Plants reinvent sugar daily
and hardly anyone applauds. Once as a boy I sat
in a corner covering my ears, singing Quranic verse

after Quranic verse. Each syllable was perfect, but only
the lonely rumble in my head gave praise. This is why
we put mirrors in birdcages, why we turn on lamps

to double our shadows. I love my body more
than other bodies. When I sleep next to a man, he becomes
an extension of my own brilliance. Or rather, he becomes
an echo of my own anticlimax. I was delivered

from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound
of flesh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now
I feed faith to faith, suffer human noise, complain
about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between

the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence
and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, fire,
and any number of poisons. The dream, then: to erupt
into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into

its tantrum of blades. There has always been a swarm
of hungry ghosts orbiting my body—even now,
I can feel them plotting in their luminous diamonds

of fog, each eying a rib or a thighbone. They are
arranging their plans like worms preparing
to rise through the soil. They are ready to die
with their kind, dry and stiff above the wet earth.

Source: New York Times (Hear full audio version)

The post Some Great Poems to Snuggle up to appeared first on StageMilk.

Updated July 7, 2021

If you like a particular poem, we recommend checking out the work of that writer and investigating more of their work. Each writer has a different way of attacking language and therefore performing a Shakespearean poem is very different to Charles Bukowski poem.

I hope you enjoy some of our favourite poems…

W.H Auden

Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message “He is Dead”.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Rudyard Kipling

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

Charles Bukowski

Bluebird
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the ****s and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

Eulogy To A Hell Of A Dame
some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you’ve been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here’s a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.

Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Allen Ginsberg

Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night...continue here

John Donne

Death Be Not Proud
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Birches
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Crossing The Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar

William Shakespeare

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 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;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st 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.

More on Sonnet 18

Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Anne Sexton

Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman
My daughter, at eleven
(almost twelve), is like a garden.

Oh, darling! Born in that sweet birthday suit
and having owned it and known it for so long,
now you must watch high noon enter –
noon, that ghost hour.
Oh, funny little girl – this one under a blueberry sky,
this one! How can I say that I’ve known
just what you know and just where you are?

It’s not a strange place, this odd home
where your face sits in my hand
so full of distance,
so full of its immediate fever.
The summer has seized you,
as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw
lemons as large as your desk-side globe –
that miniature map of the world –
and I could mention, too,
the market stalls of mushrooms
and garlic buds all engorged.
Or I think even of the orchard next door,
where the berries are done
and the apples are beginning to swell.
And once, with our first backyard,
I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans
we couldn’t eat.

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

I hear
as in a dream
the conversation of the old wives
speaking of womanhood.
I remember that I heard nothing myself.
I was alone.
I waited like a target.

Let high noon enter –
the hour of the ghosts.
Once the Romans believed
that noon was the ghost hour,
and I can believe it, too,
under that startling sun,
and someday they will come to you,
someday, men bare to the waist, young Romans
at noon where they belong,
with ladders and hammers
while no one sleeps.

But before they enter
I will have said,
Your bones are lovely,
and before their strange hands
there was always this hand that formed.

Oh, darling, let your body in,
let it tie you in,
in comfort.
What I want to say, Linda,
is that women are born twice.

If I could have watched you grow
as a magical mother might,
if I could have seen through my magical transparent belly,
there would have been such a ripening within:
your embryo,
the seed taking on its own,
life clapping the bedpost,
bones from the pond,
thumbs and two mysterious eyes,
the awfully human head,
the heart jumping like a puppy,
the important lungs,
the becoming –
while it becomes!
as it does now,
a world of its own,
a delicate place.

I say hello
to such shakes and knockings and high jinks,
such music, such sprouts,
such dancing-mad-bears of music,
such necessary sugar,
such goings-on!

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

What I want to say, Linda,
is that there is nothing in your body that lies.
All that is new is telling the truth.
I’m here, that somebody else,
an old tree in the background.

Darling,
stand still at your door,
sure of yourself, a white stone, a good stone –
as exceptional as laughter
you will strike fire,
that new thing!

Philip Larkin

Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Ellen Bass

What did I love 
What did I love about killing the chickens? Let me start
with the drive to the farm as darkness
was sinking back into the earth.
The road damp and shining like the snail’s silver
ribbon and the orchard
with its bony branches.

continue reading…

Philip Levine

continue reading…

Brian Patten

The Armada
Long long ago
when everything I was told was believable
and the little I knew was less limited than now…continue reading

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Other Poetry Resources

The Times Best Poetry
Poetry Foundation
Poets.Org
The New Yorker Poetry Podcast

The post Best Poems of All Time appeared first on StageMilk.

These sonnets investigate love, loss, deception, time, youth and are certainly not simple love poems. Like much of Shakespeare’s work, a cursory glance may lead one to believe the words are simply light, easy 14 lines of verses, but in fact they are full of pain and longing and remain some of Shakespeare’s most personal writings.

I think this list should be a good starting point if you want to learn more about Shakespeare’s sonnets. Many of these you will be familiar with (I’m sure at least the iconic Sonnet 18), and some you will not. I urge you to pick up a copy of the sonnets and read them all! If you have a personal favourite let us know in a comment below…

Top 25 Shakespeare Sonnets

• Sonnet 27
  1

  Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
  The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
  But then begins a journey in my head,
  To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
  For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
  Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
  And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
  Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
  Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
  Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
  Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
  Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
  Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
  For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

• Sonnet 18
  2

  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.

• Sonnet 116
  3

  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.

• Sonnet 104
  4

  To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
  For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
  Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
  Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
  Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
  In process of the seasons have I seen,
  Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
  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 perceived;
  So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
  Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived;
  For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
  Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
  

• Sonnet 130
  5

  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 damasked, 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.

• Sonnet 129
  6

  The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
  Is lust in action, and, till action, lust
  Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
  Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
  Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
  Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
  On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
  Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
  Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme,
  A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe,
  Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
  All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

• Sonnet 1
  7

  From fairest creatures we desire increase,
  That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
  But as the riper should by time decease,
  His tender heir might bear his memory;
  But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
  Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
  Making a famine where abundance lies,
  Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
  Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
  And only herald to the gaudy spring
  Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
  And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.
  Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
  To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

• Sonnet 65
  8

  Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
  But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
  How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
  Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
  O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
  Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
  When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
  Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
  O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
  Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
  Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
  Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
  O, none, unless this miracle have might,
  That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

• Sonnet 75
  9

  So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
  Or as sweet seasoned showers are to the ground;
  And for the peace of you I hold such strife
  As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
  Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
  Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
  Now counting best to be with you alone,
  Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure;
  Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
  And by and by clean starved for a look;
  Possessing or pursuing no delight
  Save what is had or must from you be took.
  Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
  Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

• Sonnet 23
  10

  As an unperfect actor on the stage
  Who with his fear is put besides his part,
  Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
  Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
  So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
  The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
  And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
  O’ercharged with burden of mine own love’s might.
  O, let my books be then the eloquence
  And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
  Who plead for love and look for recompense
  More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
  O, learn to read what silent love hath writ;
  To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

• Sonnet 80
  11

  O, how I faint when I of you do write,
  Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
  And in the praise thereof spends all his might
  To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
  But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
  The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
  My saucy bark inferior far to his
  On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
  Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat
  Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
  Or being wrecked, I am a worthless boat,
  He of tall building and of goodly pride.
  Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
  The worst was this: my love was my decay.

• Sonnet 22
  12

  My glass shall not persuade me I am old
  So long as youth and thou are of one date;
  But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
  Then look I death my days should expiate.
  For all that beauty that doth cover thee
  Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
  Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me.
  How can I then be elder than thou art?
  O therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
  As I, not for myself, but for thee will,
  Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
  As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
  Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
  Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

• Sonnet 3
  13

  Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
  Now is the time that face should form another,
  Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
  Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
  For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
  Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
  Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
  Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
  Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
  Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
  So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
  Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
  But if thou live rememb’red not to be,
  Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

• Sonnet 30
  14

  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,
  For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
  And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
  And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight.
  Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
  And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
  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.

• Sonnet 106
  15

  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.

• Sonnet 19
  16

  
  Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
  And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
  Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
  And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood;
  Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
  And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
  To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
  But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:
  O, carve not with the hours my love’s fair brow,
  Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!
  Him in thy course untainted do allow
  For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
  Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong
  My love shall in my verse ever live young.

• Sonnet 53
  17

  What is your substance, whereof are you made,
  That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
  Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
  And you but one, can every shadow lend.
  Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
  Is poorly imitated after you;
  On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
  And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
  Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
  The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
  The other as your bounty doth appear;
  And you in every blessed shape we know.
  In all external grace you have some part,
  But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

• Sonnet 55
  18

  
  Not marble nor the gilded monuments
  Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
  But you shall shine more bright in these contents
  Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
  When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
  And broils root out the work of masonry,
  Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
  The living record of your memory.
  ‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
  Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
  Even in the eyes of all posterity
  That wear this world out to the ending doom.
  So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
  You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

• Sonnet 73
  19

  That time of year thou mayst in me behold
  When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
  Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
  In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
  As after sunset fadeth in the west,
  Which by and by black night doth take away,
  Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
  In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
  That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
  As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
  Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
  This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
  To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

• Sonnet 86
  20

  Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
  Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
  That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
  Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
  Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
  Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
  No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
  Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
  He, nor that affable familiar ghost
  Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
  As victors of my silence cannot boast;
  I was not sick of any fear from thence:
  But when your countenance filled up his line,
  Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

• Sonnet 107
  21

  Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
  Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
  Can yet the lease of my true love control,
  Supposed as forfeit to a cónfined doom.
  The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
  And the sad augurs mock their own preságe;
  Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
  And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
  Now with the drops of this most balmy time
  My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
  Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
  While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes.
  And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
  When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

• Sonnet 121
  22

  ’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
  When not to be receives reproach of being,
  And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
  Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.
  For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
  Give salutation to my sportive blood?
  Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
  Which in their wills count bad that I think good?
  No, I am that I am; and they that level
  At my abuses reckon up their own:
  I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
  By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
  Unless this general evil they maintain:
  All men are bad and in their badness reign..

• Sonnet 144
  23

  Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
  Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
  The better angel is a man right fair,
  The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.
  To win me soon to hell, my female evil
  Tempteth my better angel from my side,
  And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
  Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
  And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend
  Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
  But being both from me, both to each friend,
  I guess one angel in another’s hell:
  Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

• Sonnet 138
  24

  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 untutored youth,
  Unlearnèd 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 suppressed.
  But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
  And wherefore say not I that I am old?
  Oh, 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 flattered be.

• Sonnet 33
  25

  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
  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;
  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.

Understanding a Shakespeare Sonnet

Understanding these sonnets can be tough. The archaic language and the lack of context make them a real challenge for actors and poetry lovers. I actually find unpacking a Shakespearean sonnet can be more difficult than a Shakespeare monologue in many cases. However, if we want to truly understand these wonderful sonnets, we must investigate them thoroughly. Here is my process for unlocking the sense and beauty of these sonnets:

#1 Look up unfamiliar words. Get a dictionary, ideally Shakespeare’s Words, and make sure you understand all the words in your sonnet. Another incredible tool is Etymonline. This is an online etymology dictionary. I often find this gives a clearer insight into the language and can elaborate on the historical context surrounding any difficult words.

#2 One thought at a time. Make sure you understand each thought. It’s not enough to understand the themes or the overarching sentiment. You have to understand every word, every line and every thought.

#3 Research. There are a lot of resources out there for your sonnets. Look up the context of your sonnet. Who is Shakespeare talking to and why is he saying these words? Of course you have to use your own instincts, but always best to do some research first.

#4 Read more Shakespeare. Shakespeare is like another language. To truly master Shakespeare’s 450 year old words you need to be reading, watching and working on Shakespeare text as often as you can.

#5 Who are you talking to? There are competing views on the intended subject of the sonnets, but researching this can be really helpful. The early sonnets are often attributed to the “fair youth”. Even thinking about who this mysterious youth might have been or why Shakespeare was writing these sonnets in the first place, can really unlock doors in your understanding. This RSC article could be a helpful starting point. 

Enjoy investigating these wonderful sonnets!

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