“Let not my love be called idolatry,Nor my beloved as an idol show,Since all alike my songs and praises beTo one, of one, still such, and ever so.Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,Still constant in a wondrous excellence;Therefore my verse to constancy confined,One thing expressing, leaves out difference.Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,Which three till now, never kept seat in one.”

“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.”

“O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,Which have no correspondence with true sight!...Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,That censures falsely what they see aright?If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,What means the world to say it is not so?If it be not, then love doth well denoteLove's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,That is so vex'd with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view;The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. - Shakespeare's Sonnet 148”

“Come away, come away, Death,And in sad cypress 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, 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 strewn:Not a friend, not a friend greetMy poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me O whereSad true lover never find my grave, to weep there!”

“Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all,What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call, All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more. Then if for my love thou my love receivest,I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest, But yet be blam’d, if thou this self deceivest By willful taste of what thyself refusest.”

“By innocence I swear, and by my youth, I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth. And that no woman has, nor never none Shall mistress be of it, save I alone. And so, adieu, good madam; never more Will I my master’s tears to you deplore.”

“One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sunNe'er saw her match since first the world begun.”