Sonnet · Dreams & Sleep
Sonnet 87: Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing
1Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
2And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
3The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
4My bonds in thee are all determinate.
5For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
6And for that riches where is my deserving?
7The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
8And so my patent back again is swerving.
9Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
10Or me to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
11So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
12Comes home again, on better judgement making.
13 Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
14 In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
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“Sonnet 87: Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-87
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 87: Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- 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 11-syllable lines.
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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 87: Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing 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 49e6c6062895f1e5…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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