The first two lines of Sonnet 17 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1
Q2
Q3
C
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, yellowed 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.
4
8
12
14
—William Shakespeare[1]
Sonnet 17 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is the final poem of what are referred to by scholars as the procreation sonnets (Sonnets 1-17) with which the Fair Youth sequence opens.
Sonnet 17 questions the poet's descriptions of the sequence's young man, believing that future generations will see these descriptions as exaggerations, if the youth does not make a copy of himself by fathering a child. As in Sonnet 130, Shakespeare shows himself to be hesitant about self-assured, flamboyant, and flowery proclamations of beauty.
^Pooler, C[harles] Knox, ed. (1918). The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets. The Arden Shakespeare [1st series]. London: Methuen & Company. OCLC 4770201.
Sonnet17 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is the final poem of what are referred to by scholars...
Sonnets—also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets—are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne (1572–1631). The sonnets...
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The...
Sonnet 18 (also known as "Shall I compare thee to a summer day") is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by English poet and playwright William...
Sonnet 15 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It forms a diptych with Sonnet 16, as Sonnet 16 starts...
Nightingale" * Sonnet IV, "To the Moon" Sonnet V, "To the South Downs" * Sonnet VI, "To Hope" Sonnet VII, "On the Departure of the Nightingale" * Sonnet VIII,...
The procreation sonnets are Shakespeare's sonnets numbers 1 through 17. Although Sonnet 15 does not directly refer to procreation, the single-minded urgings...
Sonnet 1 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence...
Vane the Younger by Vane's chaplain George Sikes included John Milton's "Sonnet17", written in 1652 in praise of Vane, and presented to Vane that year....
Sonnet 2 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence...
the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, a treatise, The Defence of Poesy (also known...
The sonnet was a popular form of poetry during the Romantic period: William Wordsworth wrote 523, John Keats 67, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 48, and Percy...
Sonnet 138 is one of the most famous of William Shakespeare's sonnets. Making use of frequent puns ("lie" and "lie" being the most obvious), it shows...
Sonnet 13 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence...
Sonnet 71 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the...
Sonnet 144 (along with Sonnet 138) was published in the Passionate Pilgrim (1599). Shortly before this, Francis Meres referred to Shakespeare's Sonnets...
extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain...
Sonnet 3 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is often referred to as a procreation sonnet that falls...
Sonnet 4 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence...
The sonnet continues Sonnet 5, thus forming a diptych. It also contains the same distillatory trope featured in Sonnet 54, Sonnet 74 and Sonnet 119....
Cien sonetos de amor ("100 Love Sonnets") is a collection of sonnets written by the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda originally published in...
Holy Sonnet VIII – also known by its opening words as If Faithful Souls Be Alike Glorified – is a poem written by John Donne, an English metaphysical poet...
Selma Sonnet (born 17 January 1968 in Bad Kreuznach) is a West German sport shooter. She competed in rifle shooting events at the 1988 Summer Olympics...
Sonnet 8 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence...