Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

William Gladstone, To a Rejected Sonnet

Poor child of sorrow! who didst boldly spring,
Like sapient Pallas, from thy parent's brain
All armed in mail of proof! and thou wouldst fain
Leap further yet, and on exulting wing
Rise to the summit of the printer's press!
But cruel hand hath nipped thy buds amain,
Hath fixed on thee the darkling inky stain,
Hath soiled thy splendour and defiled thy dress!
Where are thy "full-orbed moon" and "sky serene"?
And where thy "waving foam" and "foaming wave"?
All, all are blotted by the murderous pen
And lie unhonoured in their papery grave!
Weep, gentle sonnets! Sonneteers, deplore!
And vow--and keep your vow--you'll write no more!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On a Discovery Made Too Late

Thou bleedest, my poor Heart! and thy distress
Reasoning I ponder with a scornful smile
And probe thy sore wound sternly, though the while
Swoln be mine eye and dim with heaviness.
Why didst thou listen to Hope's whisper bland?
Or, listening, why forget the healing tale,
When Jealousy with feverous fancies pale
Jarr'd thy fine fibres with a maniac's hand?
Faint was that Hope, and rayless!--Yet 'twas fair
And sooth'd with many a dream the hour of rest:
Thou should'st have lov'd it most, when most opprest,
And nurs'd it with an agony of care,
Even as a mother her sweet infant heir
That wan and sickly droops upon her breast!