Sonnet · Death & Loss
Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
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“Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-146
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- Death & Loss, Peace
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 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth 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 8a87f2303262a0b2…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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