LXXXVI

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 fill'd up his line,

Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

Shakespeare's Sonnets - Complete Text

Shakespeare's Sonnets E-Text contains the full text of Shakespeare's Sonnets

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• Sources

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• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 1 - "From fairest creatures we desire increase"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 18 - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 20 - "A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 30 - "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 52 - "So am I as the rich, whose blessed key"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 60 - "Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 73 - "That time of year thou mayst in me behold"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 87 - "Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 94 - "They that have power to hurt and will do none"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 116 - "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 126 - "O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 129 - "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 130 - "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 146 - "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth"
• Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 153 - "Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep"
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