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Sonnet · Nature

Sonnet 35: No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done

by William Shakespeare

No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done:

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and even I in this,

Authorizing thy trespass with compare,

Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,

Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense, —

Thy adverse party is thy advocate, —

And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:

Such civil war is in my love and hate,

That I an accessary needs must be,

To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

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Quick facts

Poem
Sonnet 35: No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done
Poet
William Shakespeare
Length
14 lines
Form
Sonnet
Themes
Nature, Love, War & Remembrance

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 35: No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done 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 f98f85f9bef77b16
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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