Sonnet 138

When my love swears
that she is made of truth,
I take her word, though I do know she lies,
That she might think me some green youth,
Not taught in how
the world's false facts are sly.

Thus with the vain thought
that she thinks me young,
Though she knows my days are past the best,
I just take the word from
her false-spoke tongue:
On both sides thus is plain
truth all down pressed.

But why is it she says not she's not just?
And why is it I say not that I'm old?
Oh, love's best guise is when we seem to trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.

And so I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we more vain be.

William Shakespeare

Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare
 

A Rose Tree

'O WORDS are lightly spoken,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.'

"It needs to be but watered,'
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.'

"But where can we draw water,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree.'

WButlerYeats

 

red rose lass 2004