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Three Shakespeare Sonnets

Song Cycle by Annette Kruisbrink (b. 1958)

Publisher: Les Productions d’OZ (external link)

1. Sonnet 17  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 17

See other settings of this text.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 17, first published 1857
  • FRE French (Français) (François Pierre Guillaume Guizot) , no title, appears in Œuvres Complètes de Shakspeare Volume VIII, in Sonnets, no. 17, first published 1863
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Chi crederà ai miei versi in un tempo futuro", copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Sonnet 40  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
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.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 40

See other settings of this text.

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
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Prenditi ogni mio amore, amore, sì, prenditi tutto", copyright © 2007, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. Sonnet 66  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappilly forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
[And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted]1
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
  [Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
  Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.]2

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 66

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Josef Václav Sládek) , "Sonet 66"
  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 66, first published 1857
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Sonetto LXVI", copyright © 2006, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Sonet 67", appears in Z sonetów, no. 2, Warsaw, first published 1907

View original text (without footnotes)
1 omitted by Eisler.
2 Eisler: "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry."

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 335
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