Printed in London, this first edition of Shakespeare’s Collected Poems is an invaluable document (yet so …) in the history of English literature, and literature as a whole. Listed by “Heritage” for the modest price of $ 19,000. That’s a lot of money, but it’s cheap for what this book is really: The quintessence of English literature. If my purse was fuller …

SONNET XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grows’t:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.