When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

Download Episode 8 – Sonnet 138 Sonnet Slam Edition

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty`s field,
Thy youth`s proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a totter`d weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask`d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty`s use,
If thou couldst answer this fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel`st it cold.

Download Episode 7 – Sonnet 2

The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy;
Until life’s composition be recured
By those swift messengers return’d from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assured
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:
This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,
I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Download Episode 6 – Sonnet 45

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, 
Injurious distance should not stop my way; 
For then despite of space I would be brought, 
From limits far remote where thou dost stay. 
No matter then although my foot did stand 
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee; 
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land 
As soon as think the place where he would be. 
But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought, 
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought 
I must attend time`s leisure with my moan, 
Receiving nought by elements so slow 
But heavy tears, badges of either`s woe.

Download Episode 5 – Sonnet 44

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`s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies, 
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world`s fresh ornament 
And only herald to the gaudy spring, 
Within thine own bud buriest thy content 
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. 
    Pity the world, or else this glutton be, 
    To eat the world`s due, by the grave and thee.

Download Episode 4 – Sonnet 1

Being your slave, what should I do but tend 
Upon the hours and times of your desire? 
I have no precious time at all to spend, 
Nor services to do, till you require. 
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour 
When you have bid your servant once adieu; 
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought 
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, 
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
   So true a fool is love that in your will,
   Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

Download Episode 3 – Sonnet 57

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy`d no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow`d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
   All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 

Download Episode 1 Sonnet 129

My mistress` eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips` red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask`d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks; 
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

Download Episode 1 Sonnet 130