Sonnet 104

William Shakespeare

Teacher card

Form: sonnet
Published: 1609, in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Length: 14 lines, 117 words, 1 word in 59 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: birthday, love, thanks
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d,In process of the seasons have I seen,Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d:For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

William Shakespeare (died 1616), Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), lines 1790–1803 of Project Gutenberg ebook #1041. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 14 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#sh-104

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/shakespeare-sonnet-104 · popplepoetry.com