Sonnet 1 Sonnet 3 Sonnet 12 Sonnet 18 Sonnet 19 Sonnet 20 Sonnet 29 Sonnet 30 Sonnet 33 Sonnet 55 Sonnet 60 Sonnet 65 Sonnet 71 Sonnet 73 Sonnet 94 Sonnet 106 Sonnet 116 Sonnet 126 Sonnet 127 Sonnet 129 Sonnet 130 Sonnet 138 Sonnet 144 Sonnet 146 Sonnet 147

Sonnet 30

Original Text

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Modern English

When I sit in quiet, private sessions of memory and call up the past to account for itself, I find myself sighing over all the things I reached for and missed, and mourning afresh the time I've wasted in my life:

Original Text

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Modern English

then I can weep — eyes not accustomed to it — for dear friends buried in death's endless night, and grieve again over loves whose pain I thought was settled long ago, and ache for so many things I once had and lost:

Original Text

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before.

Modern English

then I go back through old grievances I've already grieved, and slowly, woe by woe, work through the full ledger of sorrows already mourned and mourned again, paying the debt as if it had never been paid.

Original Text

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

Modern English

But if, in the midst of all that, I think of you, dear friend, every loss is made whole again, and every sorrow ends.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Sonnet 30

Sonnet 30