Poems I Know By Heart

Shakespeare's Sonnets tell the story of his life.
#76
Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent;
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love, still telling what is told.

#94
(I don't know this one by heart, but it tells his name. It's the only one of 154 sonnets that contains all the letters of his name in order--his usual signature. All the letters of his first name are counted from the left; all the letters of his last name are counted from the right. I presented this at an Oxford Shakespeare Society convention in Atlanta or Washington DC, I forget which. The poem doesn't make much sense, except that it tells his name.) Drawing by me, from a portrait of the Earl of Oxford.

ThEy that have power to hurt and will do none,
That Do not do the thing they most do show,
Who moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, And to temptation slow;
They Rightly do inherit Heaven's graces,
AnD husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and Owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their eXcellence;
The summer's flower is to the summer sweEt
Though to itself it only live aNd die;
But if that flower with base inFection meet,
The basest weed Outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by theiR deeds:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeDs.