Sonnet XL | Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take...

Language: English

Our translations: ITA

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 blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
  Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
  Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 40 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895 - 1968), "Sonnet XL - Take all my loves", op. 125 (Shakespeare Sonnets), Heft 4 no. 2 (1963) [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Leslie Crabtree (b. 1941), "Sonnet XL", 2003 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Richard Simpson (1820 - 1876), "Sonnet XL", 1865 [ medium voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Rudi Spring (b. 1962), "Sonnet XL", op. 72 no. 1 (1999) [ vocal quintet: five solo voices a cappella (s-mez-a-t-bar) ], from Drei Shakespeare-Gesänge, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 40, first published 1857

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2004-08-09
Line count: 14
Word count: 120