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Sonnet · Love

Sonnet 56: Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said

by William Shakespeare

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said

Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,

Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd,

To-morrow sharpened in his former might:

So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fill

Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,

To-morrow see again, and do not kill

The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness.

Let this sad interim like the ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted new

Come daily to the banks, that when they see

Return of love, more blest may be the view;

Or call it winter, which being full of care,

Makes summer's welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.

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Quick facts

Poem
Sonnet 56: Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Poet
William Shakespeare
Length
14 lines
Form
Sonnet
Themes
Love, Nature, Winter

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 56: Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said 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 84f1874915dfc091
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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