Sonnet 72

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The first five lines of Sonnet 72 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C O, lest the world should task you to recite What merit liv’d in me, that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove; Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon deceased I Than niggard truth would willingly impart: O, lest your true love may seem false in this, That you for love speak well of me untrue, My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me nor you. For I am sham’d by that which I bring forth, And so should you, to love things nothing worth. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

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C

O, lest the world should task you to recite
What merit liv’d in me, that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O, lest your true love may seem false in this,
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am sham’d by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

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8



12

14

Sonnet 72 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth Sequence, in which The Poet expresses his love toward a young man. The Fair Youth Sequence includes Sonnet 1 through Sonnet 126. Sonnet 72 prominently features a dark, morbid tone with references to death and the afterlife.

Sonnet 72 is an extension of Sonnet 71. In it The Poet wrestles with feelings of inadequacy and mortality, specifically how his works will live on after his own death. The Poet addresses a young male lover. Throughout, The Poet urges him to forget their love and his works upon The Poet's death.

Sonnet 72 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, abab cdcd efef gg and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The fifth line (accepting a 2-syllable pronunciation of "virtuous") exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

In line nine, the lexical stress of "true" would normally be subordinated to that of "love", fitting most naturally into × / which here would create an unmetrical line. Placing contrastive accent upon "true" saves the meter...