Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18 is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Homoeroticism
The most prominent example in the Western canon is that of the sonnets by William Shakespeare. Though some critics have made assertions, some in efforts to preserve Shakespeare's literary credibility, to its being non-erotic in nature, no critic has disputed that the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets concern explicitly male-male love poetry. The only other Renaissance artist writing in English to do this was the poet Richard Barnfield, who in "The Affectionate Shepherd" and "Cynthia" wrote fairly explicitly homoerotic poetry. Barnfield's poems, furthermore, are now widely accepted as a major influence upon Shakespeare's.