Poems by William Shakespeare
Sonnet CL: O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantize of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
Miscellany
Other poems by William Shakespeare
O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
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,
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath;
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,
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that …
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said "I hate"
To me that languished for her sake.
