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• XXV
• Let those who are in favour with their stars
• Of public honour and proud titles boast,
• Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
• Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most.
• Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread
• But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,
• And in themselves their pride lies buried,
• For at a frown they in their glory die.
• The painful warrior famoused for fight,
• After a thousand victories once foil’d,
• Is from the book of honour razed quite,
• And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d:
•       Then happy I, that love and am belov’d
•       Where I may not remove nor be remov’d.

• XXXVI
• Let me confess that we two must be twain,
• Although our undivided loves are one:
• So shall those blots that do with me remain,
• Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
• In our two loves there is but one respect,
• Though in our lives a separable spite,
• Which though it alter not love’s sole effect,
• Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight.
• I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
• Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
• Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
• Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
•       But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
•       As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

• XCVII
• How like a winter hath my absence been
• From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
• What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
• What old December’s bareness everywhere!
• And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
• The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
• Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
• Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
• Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
• But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;
• For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
• And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
•       Or, if they sing, ‘tis with so dull a cheer,
•       That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), who needs no introduction on a poetry page, was considered the greatest English poet — and perhaps one of the greatest poets of any language — to put pen to paper. The general reading public usually demonstrates an increased interest in his work, especially his sonnets on love, around Valentine’s Day.