Back to main page
Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 124
Cite
Download Shakespeare's Sonnets
Last updated: Fri, Jul 31, 2015
- PDF Download as PDF
- DOC (for MS Word, Apple Pages, Open Office, etc.) without line numbers Download as DOC (for MS Word, Apple Pages, Open Office, etc.) without line numbers
- DOC (for MS Word, Apple Pages, Open Office, etc.) with line numbers Download as DOC (for MS Word, Apple Pages, Open Office, etc.) with line numbers
- HTML Download as HTML
- TXT Download as TXT
- XML Download as XML
Navigate this work
Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 124Sonnet 124
124
Synopsis:
In this difficult and much-discussed sonnet, the poet declares the permanence and wisdom of his love.
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,
4Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thrallèd discontent,
8Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls.
It fears not policy, that heretic
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
12That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness who have lived for crime.