Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there

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Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me."

Again, in Sonnet CX, we find an allusion to the distasteful nature of
the actor's profession which seems to ring sincere. Thus in a few
cases Shakespeare may be giving us glimpses into his real heart; but in
general the sentiments expressed in his sonnets could be explained as
due to the literary conventions of this time.

+Other Poems+.--The two narrative poems and the sonnets make up most of
Shakespeare's nondramatic poetry. A word may be added about some other
scattered bits of verse which are connected with his name. In 1599 an
unscrupulous publisher, named William Jaggard, brought out a book of
miscellaneous poems by various authors, called _The Passionate
Pilgrim_. Since Shakespeare was a popular writer, his name was sure to
increase the sale of any book; so Jaggard, with an advertising instinct
worthy of a later age, coolly printed the whole thing as the work of
Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, only a few short pieces were by him;
and were probably stolen from some private manuscript.

In 1601 a poem, _The Phoenix and the Turtle_, was also printed as his
in an appendix to a longer poem by another man. We cannot trust the
printer when he signs it with Shakespeare's name, and we have no other
evidence about its authorship; but the majority of scholars believe it
to be genuine. Another poem, _A Lover's Complaint_, which was printed
in the same volume with the sonnets in 1609, is of distinctly less
merit and probably spurious.

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Lastly, the short poems incorporated in the plays deserve brief notice.
In a way they are part of the plots in which they are embedded; but
they may also be considered as separate lyrics. Several sonnets and
verses in stanza form occur in _Romeo and Juliet_ and in the early
comedies. Three of these were printed as separate poems in _The
Passionate Pilgrim_. Far more important than the above, however, are
the songs which are scattered through all the plays early and late.
Their merit is of a supreme quality; some of the most famous musical
compose