To cut a long story, very short Geoff Le Pard recently asked me which was my favourite of Shakepeare’s Sonnets. I grabbed my ‘Complete Works’ of the great bard to peruse them for the first time in a while. Still amidst the pages, were notes of a few I must have sought out in my early 20s – perhaps unoriginally to include in a love letter.
I didn’t have time to re-read all 154 to answer the question (though, now I may and revisit this later) but by happy chance came across one that since facing death a little too closely head-on, has always disturbed me – whilst it is beautiful, especially to read aloud – I cannot bear its sentiment.
The third one amuses me as a writer and almost hit the notes of my past few weeks perfectly!
Sonnet is derived from the Italian sonetto, meaning little poem. By the thirteenth century sonnet signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a specific structure and pattern of rhyme.
Shakespeare’s 154 Sonnets were first published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609. They follow various themes and it’s therefore excusable to have favourites for a number of moods and situations!
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 dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet LXXI
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Finally, my current favourite.
Sonnet C
Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long,
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,
If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make Time’s spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife.
Further reading and exploration of Shakepeare’s Sonnets can be found on the Oxquarry Books site: Shakepeare’s Sonnets and Wikipedia.
Let me know your particular favourites!
May 30, 2014 at 11:57 am
You ran with it, Lisa… I merely handed on the baton – damn these sporting metaphors. Your fault too.
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May 30, 2014 at 5:27 am
What a beautiful form the sonnet is. I had forgotten, and have not read any since school days that involved underlining words, identifying rhythm and rhyme sequences and discussing intent. I also remember writing one of my own. The rhythm came back to me when I was reading those you shared. I’ll have to find my collection and read some more. Thanks for reawakening the interest.
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May 30, 2014 at 8:41 am
And thanks Geoff – all this came from a frabjous discussion about the Jabberwocky!
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May 30, 2014 at 3:13 am
Great choices!
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May 30, 2014 at 8:36 am
Thanks for stopping by Andy!
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May 29, 2014 at 11:48 pm
It has to be 130…
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
For a competition I did my own version. I’ll try and find it
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May 30, 2014 at 8:38 am
Wow! That one needs some dissecting! Back later…
… I have to admit to finding this one confusing as I see the humour as limerickal (making that word up methinks) but some analyses are suggesting a more extreme extrapolation to the polar opposite.
How do you take it Geoff?
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May 30, 2014 at 9:47 am
Ok so this is my (trite) attempt to update the bard…
Only skin deep (after Sonnet 130)
The azure of the wide Pacific seas
Has depth, unlike your bland insipid eyes.
A dancer’s legs are shaped by art to please
But yours are not for show, they need disguise.
My tongue, whose form can change to suit all tastes,
From gentle probe to pert, priapic beast,
Becomes a dry and flaccid thing, all chaste,
If suffocated by your doggy breath’s release.
Facial engineers, who can craft Kate Moss
From Quasimodo, turn and run a mile:
I’d give my soul to Satan, bear any loss
If they’d mould Venus from your Cubist smile.
Let’s face it, love, on me you’ve placed a hex:
It’s not your looks that bind us, just the sex.
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May 30, 2014 at 9:59 am
Totally laugh out loud funny! Thank you Geoff – you could start something here!
(You should post this!)
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May 30, 2014 at 11:56 am
Yes, maybe I should post. A poetry post wouldn’t be a bad move. As for your query on interpretation, I love the way you start with him slandering the woman before admitting it is part of is love. I think it is the obvious (too obvious) humour that appeals. I do see there are deeper and slightly more sinister ways of looking at this but I try to ignore them..
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May 29, 2014 at 5:27 pm
Wonderful post Lisa. It is always time well spent to return to Shakespeare, and to be reminded to pull my own time-worn volume down from the shelf (The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton Mifflin, 1974, bought at Arizona State University Bookstore in 1975 for my survey of Shakespeare class, and carted around three continents since then.) I felt a small stab of kinship with you when I opened it up and discovered that I, too, had marked Sonnet # 71… I must have been in my early twenties when I did so. Now, having been one of those women who waited to have a baby until her siblings began to remind her that she was no longer a “spring chicken,” I so resonate with the Bard’s lines below:
SONNET III
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou are thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live rememb’red not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
You are right, it is hard to choose. Inspired by your post, I vow to read a sonnet a day, and to allow this treasure of a book, that has sat too long mute on my shelf, to inspire me anew.
Thank you.
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May 29, 2014 at 5:30 pm
Thanks Jeanne – this one’s lovely – I’ve not read it I’m sure – the last two lines are quite a punch! Must compare notes as we go along – one for me at bedtime every night!
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