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Sonnet · Love

Sonnet 122: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

by William Shakespeare

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full character'd with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain,

Beyond all date; even to eternity:

Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist;

Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more:

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

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Quick facts

Poem
Sonnet 122: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Poet
William Shakespeare
Length
14 lines
Form
Sonnet
Themes
Love

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
14 lines · one 14-line stanza
Line length
Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
William Shakespeare1564–1616
Source record
PoetryDBSonnet 122: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain by william-shakespeare, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 2a88163fb009b12c
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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