Sonnet · Love
Sonnet 47: Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took
1Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
2And each doth good turns now unto the other:
3When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
4Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
5With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,
6And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
7Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,
8And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
9So, either by thy picture or my love,
10Thy self away, art present still with me;
11For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
12And I am still with them, and they with thee;
13 Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
14 Awakes my heart, to heart's and eye's delight.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Sonnet 47: Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-47
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 47: Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- Love, Sad, Dreams & Sleep
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 47: Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took 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 56bb0c91a1955c83…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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