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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  The Course of True Love

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

I. Disappointment in Love

The Course of True Love

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

From “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act I. Sc. 1.

FOR aught that ever I could read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth:

But, either it was different in blood,

Or else misgraffèd in respect of years,

Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man hath power to say,—Behold!

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.