Sonnet CLI
Love is too young to know what conscience is,Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:For, thou betraying me, I do betrayMy nobler part to my gross body’s treason;My soul doth tell my body that he mayTriumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,But rising at thy name doth point out thee,As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,He is contented thy poor drudge to be,To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.No want of conscience hold it that I callHer ‘love,’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.
Words in this poem
- conscience n.
- Knowledge of one's own thoughts or actions; consciousness. [F. conscience, fr. L. conscientia, fr. consciens, p.pr. of conscire to know, to be conscious; con- + scire to know. See Science.]
- cheater n.
- One who cheats.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sonnet CLI is in the public domain. This text is taken from Shakespeare's Sonnets, Project Gutenberg ebook #1041; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Shakespeare, Sonnet CLI, in The Sonnets (1609), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1041, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shakespeare-sonnets/sonnet-151.html, id L00169.
Form and metre
Sonnet CLI is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCDEFEFGG, the pattern of the English sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 21% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other English sonnets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABCDCDEFEFGG isA · loveB · amissA · proveB · betrayC · treasonD · mayC · reasonD · theeE · prideF · beE · sideF · callG · fallG
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Love is too young to know what conscience is, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? | 10 | ····/˘···· |
| Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, | 10 | ·/˘/˘···˘/ |
| Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| For, thou betraying me, I do betray | 10 | ··˘/˘···˘/ |
| My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; | 11 | ·/˘····/˘/˘ |
| My soul doth tell my body that he may | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason, | 11 | /˘·····/˘/˘ |
| But rising at thy name doth point out thee, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| He is contented thy poor drudge to be, | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| No want of conscience hold it that I call | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Her ‘love,’ for whose dear love I rise and fall. | 10 | ·········· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.