“Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;Life and these lips have long been separated:Death lies on her like an untimely frostUpon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

“Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body.”

“There is a willow grows aslant the brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; therewith fantastic garlands did she make of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples that the liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke; when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide and, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto that element; but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.”

“Therefore I lie with her and she with me,And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.”

“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.”

“Nay, I'll conjure too.Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh:Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;Cry but 'Ay me!' pronounce but 'love' and 'dove;'Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,One nick-name for her purblind son and heir,Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim,When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid!He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thighAnd the demesnes that there adjacent lie,That in thy likeness thou appear to us!”

“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 delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat 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.”