biteDiscovery
Shakespeare's SonnetsWilliam Shakespeare

poetry · Item 76

A reason to turn the page

I keep writing the same love—why does repetition feel like a failure of invention?

Discovery 15 of 15

LXXVI

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.