Shakespeare Sonnets and the English Renaissance

Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets which cover themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. It was first published in a 1609 quarto with the full stylized title: SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. The quarto ends with "A Lover's Complaint", a narrative poem of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal.

"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'st flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel."