Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck; And yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, Or say with princes if it shall go well, By oft predict that I in heaven find: But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, And, constant stars, in them I read such art As “truth and beauty shall together thrive, If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert”; Or else of thee this I prognosticate: “Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.” 481214 Sonnet 14 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.

Like many of the others in the sequence, it is written in a type of metre called iambic pentameter, which is based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line.

Line 3 exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: Some critics argue that the Fair Youth sequence follows a story-line told by Shakespeare.

[3] Evidence that corroborates this is that the sonnets show a constant change of attitude that would seem to follow a day-by-day private journal entry.

George Steevens points out that Shakespeare's early comedy included a line stating "From women's eyes this doctrine I derive.

[11] Ovid's Amores has a similar line "at mihe te comitem auroras usque futuram- per me perque oculos, siders rostra, tuos.