Sonnet · Love
Sonnet 46: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
1Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
2How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
3Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
4My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
5My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, —
6A closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes —
7But the defendant doth that plea deny,
8And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
9To side this title is impannelled
10A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;
11And by their verdict is determined
12The clear eye's moiety, and the dear heart's part:
13 As thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part,
14 And my heart's right, thy inward love of heart.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Sonnet 46: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-46
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 46: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- 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 46: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war 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 79e403155bcb07b8…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.