Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 83 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 83

Shakespeare's Sonnet 83


  1    I never saw that you did painting need
  2    And therefore to your fair no painting set;
  3    I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
  4    The barren tender of a poet's debt;
  5    And therefore have I slept in your report,
  6    That you yourself being extant well might show
  7    How far a modern quill doth come too short,
  8    Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
  9    This silence for my sin you did impute,
 10    Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
 11    For I impair not beauty being mute,
 12    When others would give life and bring a tomb.
 13      There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
 14      Than both your poets can in praise devise.

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