Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 55 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 55

Shakespeare's Sonnet 55


  1    Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
  2    Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
  3    But you shall shine more bright in these contents
  4    Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
  5    When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
  6    And broils root out the work of masonry,
  7    Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
  8    The living record of your memory.
  9    'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
 10    Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
 11    Even in the eyes of all posterity
 12    That wear this world out to the ending doom.
 13      So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
 14      You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.

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