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Shakespeare Songs

Song Cycle by Stig Gustav Schönberg

?.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
  Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
  To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 1

See other settings of this text.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (François Pierre Guillaume Guizot) , no title, appears in Œuvres Complètes de Shakspeare Volume VIII, in Sonnets, no. 1, first published 1863
  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 1, first published 1857
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Ludwig Reinhold Walesrode) , no title, appears in William Shakspeare's sämmtliche Gedichte, in 1. Sonette, no. 1, first published 1840
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 106
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