Sonnet 30

William Shakespeare

Teacher card

Form: sonnet
Published: 1609, in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Length: 14 lines, 116 words, 1 word in 19 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 5–6. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love, retirement
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI 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: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:Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,And heavily from woe to woe tell o’erThe sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,Which I new pay as if not paid before.But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

William Shakespeare (died 1616), Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), lines 531–544 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-30

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-30 · popplepoetry.com