Category Archives: Shakespeare

vendredi, poésie

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Sonnet CXLIX. (Bill Shakespeare)

Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,
When I against myself with thee partake?
Do I not think on thee, when I forgot
Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake?
Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?
On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon?
Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend
Revenge upon myself with present moan?
What merit do I in myself respect,
That is so proud thy service to despise,
When all my best doth worship thy defect,
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;
Those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.

vendredi, poésie

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Happy Winter Solstice (tomorrow)

SONNET 97

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

What old December’s bareness every where!

And yet this time removed was summer’s time,

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,

Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:

Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me

But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;

Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

 

a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet

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There really isn’t enough Elizabethan poetry on this blog.

There was a time when I was handing out Shakespeare’s sonnets left and right, but alas, those days are gone. 

So here’s one just to keep everyone’s English up to snuff. Careful, though, read a bunch of these in one sitting and you’ll start to think in iambic pentameter.

XCI.

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their bodies’ force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away and me most wretched make.

And here’s another (Petrarchan).

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