The Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare illustrated by Charles Robinson

Frontispiece

Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise.'

On a day alack the day !
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air.

These lovers cry Oh! oh! they die!

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer ' This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine !

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing :
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming
one,
Sings this to thee :
' thou single wilt prove none.'

IN THE COURT OF LOVE
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal
war
How to divide the conquest of
thy sight ;
Mine eye my heart thy picture's
sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom
of that right.

EXEGI MONUMENTUM
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.

ALL THINGS IN LOVE 

SOME glory in their birth, some in
their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in
their bodies' force,
Some in their garments, though
new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds,
some in their horse .

Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see do lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be ;
I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee

TRUTH WITHOUT DISGUISE
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.

She burn'd with love, as straw with fire flameth ;
She burn'd out love, as soon as straw out-burneth ;
She framed the love, and yet she foil'd the framing ;
She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning.
Was this a lover, or a lecher whether ?
Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.

A LOVER'S COMPLAINT
From off a hill whose concave
womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering
vale,
My. spirits to attend this double
voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sadtuned
tale ;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.