greykit.poetry — William Shakespeare/shakespeares-sonnets
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Summer is too short, too rough, too soon overcast to be the compliment it seems — so the poem hands the beloved a better season, an eternal summer held open by the lines themselves, which outlast both weather and death for as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
Outcast, friendless and sick with envy of every better-favoured man, the speaker is lifted clear by one thought of the beloved — the lark rising from sullen earth — and ends refusing to trade places with kings.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
Memory convened like a court: the speaker summons up remembrance of things past, re-weeps friends long dead and pays old griefs over again as if they had never been settled — until one thought of a dear friend cancels the whole account.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 55: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Against war, masonry and all-oblivious enmity the poem sets nothing but itself, and wagers that the rhyme will carry the beloved further than any statue of a prince — alive in lovers’ eyes until the judgment day.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
Minutes press forward like waves on shingle; Time crowns what it has raised only to transfix it, delving parallels in beauty's brow and mowing everything down — and still the verse expects to stand, praising a worth that outlives the cruel hand.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
If sad mortality overwhelms brass and stone and the sea itself, what plea can beauty possibly hold? The sonnet finds one strong hand only — black ink, in which the miracle of a love may still shine bright.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Three images of ending — bare boughs where the birds sang, the twilight after sunset, a fire dying on the ashes of its own youth — arrive at the paradox that seeing the end makes the love stronger: to love that well which thou must leave ere long.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt and will do none
A cold, unsettling praise of those who can wound and don't — lords and owners of their faces, unmoved as stone — that turns on itself in the couplet: the summer's flower is sweet only until it festers, and lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Love defined by what it refuses to do: it does not alter when it finds alteration, does not bend to the remover, is the fixed star by which a wandering ship is steered — and the poet stakes his whole work on the claim being true.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 129: The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Lust anatomised across all three tenses at once — hunted past reason, hated past reason the moment it is had, a bliss in proof and a very woe once proved — and the world knows this perfectly well, and shuns nothing.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
A systematic demolition of every Petrarchan compliment — the eyes, lips, breasts, hair, cheeks, breath and voice all fail the comparison, and the woman walks on the ground — which turns out to be the point: his love is as rare as any belied with false compare.
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1609
[william-shakespeare]
Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth
The body as a costly mansion on a short lease, gaudily painted while the soul inside starves; the remedy is to let the flesh pine and feed the soul on its loss, buying terms divine — and so feed on Death, that feeds on men.