LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,088)
  • Text Authors (19,415)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,113)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

Widmungen : aus den Sonetten von William Shakespeare

Song Cycle by Wolfgang Fortner (1907 - 1987)

1.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
  But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
  Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 20

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. 20, first published 1857
  • FRE French (Français) (François Pierre Guillaume Guizot) , no title, appears in Œuvres Complètes de Shakspeare Volume VIII, in Sonnets, no. 20, first published 1863
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Viso di donna, che Natura stessa ha dipinto", copyright © 2012, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' costs,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
      Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
      All this away, and me most wretched make.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), appears in Sonnets, no. 91

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. 91, first published 1857

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
  Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
  Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 22

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. 22, first published 1857
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Non mi convincerà lo specchio ch'io sia invecchiato", copyright © 2007, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
[Sometime]1 too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to [time thou growest]2:
  [So long]3 as men [can]4 breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 18

See other settings of this text.

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

  • DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (L. A. J. Burgersdijk)
  • FIN Finnish (Suomi) (Erkki Pullinen) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 18, first published 1857
  • FRE French (Français) (François Pierre Guillaume Guizot) , no title, appears in Œuvres Complètes de Shakspeare Volume VIII, in Sonnets, no. 18, first published 1863
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Ludwig Reinhold Walesrode) , first published 1840
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Dovrei paragonarti ad un giorno d'estate?", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • RUS Russian (Русский) (Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky) , "Сонет 18", written 1914

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Wilkinson: "Sometimes"
2 Aikin: "times thou grow'st"
3 Wilkinson: "As long"
4 Aikin: "shall"

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler
Total word count: 468
Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris