Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 86 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 86

Shakespeare's Sonnet 86


  1    Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
  2    Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
  3    That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
  4    Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
  5    Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
  6    Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
  7    No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
  8    Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
  9    He, nor that affable familiar ghost
 10    Which nightly gulls him with intelligence
 11    As victors of my silence cannot boast;
 12    I was not sick of any fear from thence:
 13      But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
 14      Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.

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