Shakespeare... Sonnet 22

Subject: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 10:53 AM

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.

Bemused? ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 10:56 AM

Ol' Will could say things well, couldn't he?

But, erm, was there anything particular that prompted the posting of this, besides its beauty?

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: MMario
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 10:57 AM

well discussed here

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:02 AM

People My Age

People my age have started looking gross
I cannot say all, and I shouldn't say most
I've seen 'em in the grocery I've seen 'em up close
People my age have started looking gross

People my age are showing some wear
There's holes where their teeth was
And their heads have gone bare
Their brains are shrinking
Faces shrinking into fat
And as for the mirror
We won't be looking into that

People my age have started looking gross
Maybe not in Colorado or up the Silicon Coast
Back in North Ontario
I'd eat my poutine on toast
Those were my first steps
On the road to looking gross

People my age are looking overripe
Some are getting operations
To tighten up what ain't tight
What gravity's ruined
They try to fix with a knife
What's pleasant in the darkness
Is plain scary in the light

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Celtaddict
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:06 AM

Ogden Nash, known for his humorous ditties, wrote some lovely things I hear seriously, among them "A Lady Thinks She Is Thirty" (pick a number) which ends,
Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you.
Time who made the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.
Oh night will not see thirty again
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me then,
How old is spring, Miranda?

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Celtaddict
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:08 AM

And does anyone have a truly tuneful, singable, melody to which one can sing classic sonnets?
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety....

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:17 AM

I'm going to have to go there, right straight away,
To that mistycle land where sonnets can play
The beautiful nuances containe'd thereof
Entwine mirth with substative feelings of love

I think sonnets will need some appropriate music... Don't you? ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:30 AM

It shouldn't be too hard to but an Elizabethan air, modified, to those rhythms.

A

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: MMario
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:32 AM

a number of sonnets have been set - google should find them.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: GUEST,Desdemona
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 11:47 AM

As someone who turned 39 this week, I find Sonnet #2 most apposite:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow   
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,   
Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now,   
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:   
Then being ask'd, where all thy beauty lies,         
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,   
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,   
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.   
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,   
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine   
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'   
Proving his beauty by succession thine!   
This were to be new made when thou art old,   
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.


Gotta love Will!

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 02:16 PM

All of this reminds me of an Irish Proverb I found on the Web, some year or so back (which I saved in a .doc file, so I could find it again):

Is maith an scáthán súil charad.

(The eye of a friend is a good mirror.)


hmmm... Now, I'm tempted to write a song around that line, somehow...

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 02:45 PM

...the love of a friend sees you never inferior

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 03:51 PM

It doesn't have to be Will:

    'Lo How Time, the suttle theif of youth
    Hath stolen on the wing, this, my three and thirtyeth year.'

John, although a crusty soul, often said it right.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: GUEST,Desdemona
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 04:12 PM

Indeed, a Shakespeare:Milton Celebrity Sonnet Death Match....now *that* would be reality show worth watching, eh?!

;~)

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 05:10 PM

From TTR: ...the love of a friend sees you never inferior

Yes, and I like that "eye of a friend is a good mirror" because it implies friends looking in each other's eyes, and seeing their mutual reflections there...

I think it was Maya Angelou who wrote a poem to that effect, that there were no mirrors in her grandmother's house -- only her grandmother's eyes...

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Helen
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 09:25 PM

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.


That's my favourite. Such sadness, such a sense of betrayal, but still totally attached to the lover so that your heart melts in forgiveness even when he/she has done you wrong.

But the first lines.... they say it all.

I loved the sonnets when I first read them all, from start to finish. As a story with a timeline they are even more beautiful than singly. Then when I heard about the speculations about the real story behind them they became even more interesting.

Helen

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 10:06 PM

My Dad forwarded this one to me years ago, written for Julia Child by her husband, and I've kept it handy for just such occasions:

O Julia, Julia, cook and nifty wench,
Whose unsurpassed quenelles and hot souffles,
Whose English, Norse, and German, and whose French,
Are all beyond my piteous powers to praise-
Whose sweetly rounded bottom and whose legs
Whose gracious face, whose nature temperate,
Are only equalled by her scrambled eggs:
Accept from me, your ever-loving mate,
This acclamation shaped in fourteen lines
Whose inner truth belies its outer sight;
For never were there foods, nor were there wines
Whose flavor equals yours for sheer delight.
O luscious dish! O gustatory pleasure!
You satisfy my taste buds beyond measure.

(Birthday 1961 by Paul Child)

SRS

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 10:24 PM

P.S.--if you do the math, he wrote this for her when she turned 50!

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Apr 03 - 12:19 AM

Here's a sonnet that's been set to music. It is on a Judy Collins LP which I probably still own. I believe it was written by Shel Silverstein. Sorry, it's too late at night for me to verify the details.

Come all of you who are not satisfied
as rulers in a lone, wallpapered room
full of mute birds and flow'rs that falsely bloom
and closets full of dreams that long ago died.

Come, let us sweep the old streets like a bride,
sweep all the dead leaves with a relentless broom.
Prepare for spring as if he were a groom
for whose light footstep eagerly we bide.

We'll sweep out the shadows where the rats lie fed
sweep out all shame, and in its place we'll make
a bower for love, a splendid marriage bed
fragrant with flowers, a-quiver for the spring.
And when he comes, our murdered dreams shall wake,
and when he comes, all the mute birds shall sing.
And when he comes, all the mute birds shall sing!

The repeated last line makes one more than a sonnet, but musically, it indicates that the song is over.

Betcha didn't know I was an intellectual, didya?

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 22 Apr 03 - 04:09 AM

I knew from first tidings, from posts ever thoughtful
In a glance and a moment wiser without envy
For the musical soul in your mind is unending
And betrays your intellegence in ways most delightful

But ever shall enticements deliver quisitions
As monied garrisons reflecting time's passage
Too slow my requestings neglecting lusts savage
With nary a fantasy and not false suppositions

For real is true in it's irksome surpassing
The want and strained reachings for essence unknown
Like elms know the sun and towards it turn grown
Bereaved of sight but aware in warm passing

Heavenly bodies can fashion their likeness false
But souls awaken often as the transcendent calls
ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 22 Apr 03 - 02:35 PM

OK... so maybe it's over the line... a bit... *BG*

Or should I say "over the top?"

Chalk up another one for spontaniety!

"The beauty you see is more real than me!" ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 22 Apr 03 - 03:53 PM

Actually, I liked it, Thomas...

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 22 Apr 03 - 04:07 PM

Someone (Leonard Bernstein, I think) pointed out that the Iambic pentameter pattern of sonnets is the same as that of the classic blues. Try "black Water Blues"

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Apr 03 - 10:44 AM

Not sure if there is a good tune... but I have over 800 sonnets if anyone wants to perform them!

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Apr 03 - 12:12 PM

"He was born, it was said, on the day of his birth. . ."

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare! He both was born and died on April 23.

SRS

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Joe_F
Date: 23 Apr 03 - 08:12 PM

Not quite Shakespearian, but:

INSECTS

No, not with you or any of my kind,
But with a pair of coupling dragonflies,
Spindles gun-blue with wings of filmy black,
Will I embalm the last shreds of my mind.
Let chevroned grasshoppers in full green dress
Parade in chaos where my body dies
To show me off, and I'll salute them back
While overflights of butterflies impress
The spies among the reeds. Oh, let me take
My leave of water striders as they row
To keep their station, court with ripples, make
Quick, bright-ringed shadows on the rock below;
And fireflies dancing at the edge of night,
Flashing their itch against the fading light.

                                           1992

On the topic of the sonnet that started this, cf. "Lies" by Stan Rogers.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 23 Apr 03 - 09:24 PM

Nice one Joe! And topic you chose, should be appropose...
ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 02:25 PM

There hangs upon the wall a silvered glass
That promises to show the truth of life.
But its truths are mere shadows that will pass.
It cannot know the truth of love -- or strife.
And when I gaze, alone, upon my face,
To note the changes Time has rendered there,
Then vanity and dread both leave their trace
And I see less of Truth than pride and fear.
A mirror cannot see, nor is it wise.
And so I long again for all those times
I saw myself reflected in your eyes
Those days we shared our tears and sang our rhymes.
The facts a mirror shows are dead and cold.
'Tis deeper Truth the eyes of friends behold.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 05:04 PM

Beautiful! ...and from whence did it come?

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 05:49 PM

From my own pure brain, Thomas, this very day...

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 06:42 PM

Wow! That's great!

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 06:55 PM

Thanks, SRS!

Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to render it into a song, with a refrain and all...

Or maybe not that verse exactly, but maybe a younger sister...

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: GUEST,Desdemona
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 08:14 PM

#75 will always be my favourite:

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 24 Apr 03 - 10:25 PM

As seeing your beauty I so easily can
Not with effort nor a trace of trying
Yet needless naught this peaceful flying
Confronted only by bystanding plan

Tis requite to the cosmos accepting muse renderings
This noticing nuance in pure innocense thankful
And enticements inspire without lusts to entangle
Excell as a deity, with true love engenderings

So please do as you will, and find love as you may
I'll shine in your beauty like the sun creates day

ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Peter T.
Date: 25 Apr 03 - 08:52 AM

What a pleasure to read this thread -- but it does raise the age old question: why does well phrased, patterned speech provide us with such pleasure? Obviously a mixture of subtle rhythms and meanings, but it is still a pleasant mystery. yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Apr 03 - 10:49 AM

Peter T--

Poetry distills imagery in such a way that for a thoughtful reader it's like a human "WinZip" program unzipping and filling in the emotions and images and smells and sounds as they emerge from the compressed environment of the page. It's largely contingent upon what the reader brings to the poem. We have some good readers as well as good writers participating on this thread.

SRS

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 25 Apr 03 - 11:54 AM

What SRS said. :-)

Also, I think rhythmic language (poems with a set meter) and other conventions of versification (end rhymes, assonance, alliteration, metaphor, and the like) act almost the way shamanic drumming does. They help hold the reader (or really, the listener, since all skilled readers of poetry hear the words in their minds) in a state of hightened yet suspended awareness -- like a trance. And that helps the imagination open up.

I seem to recall that W. B. Yeats wrote an essay on this point, published in his collection Ideas of Good and Evil, but I can't remember what the title of the essay is... perhaps: "Speaking to the Psaltry" (?)

Actually, now that I think about it, even "free verse" poems rely on rhythmic language. But the rhythms in free verse shift around from line to line.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 27 Apr 03 - 11:22 AM

And yet who could have known that Icarus flying
Would loose all sence of danger and mittent mortality
When soaring free far above our earth toned reality
Wings melted and sun scorched fell back to earth dying...

For to witness such genius so fetter'd with clooning
Is to life worse than death, devil's breath, and flames coiling
Thus the foiling of genius, despic'd and spoiling
Which springs naer relaxing nor chills of sweet swooning

So the jester investor asquanders deep musings
And 'midst laughter betrays the stone stark of his losings

*Big Sigh* ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 27 Apr 03 - 04:05 PM

When "Thomas the Rhymer" writes of genius so fetter'd
That 'tis better to fall to a flaming-wing'd death,
I'm reminded that even a poet so letter'd
Can oft miss the Joy of a simple life-breath.

The Earth is much more than a prison's foundation.
It cradles meadows and forests with life richly fill'd
And genius, though shining, can lead to damnation.
His envy aroused, Daedelus so easily kill'd.

'Tis better, I'm certain, to ride the wind lightly,
Still watching the Earth, so wide and so grand
Free from the fetters that bind the soul tightly,
And yet live on in freedom, once in sight of land.

Yes, death (brave or foolish) may grant us memorial,
Driving painters to paint, and poets to sing,
But all of that beauty, whether words or pictarial
Is cold comfort indeed next to Death's bitter sting.

And when "Thomas the Rhymer" signs his verse with *Big Sigh*
My heart is sore troubled. I must ask: "My friend, Why?"

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 27 Apr 03 - 04:51 PM

Capri he's safe and in metaphores dwellin'
The death of a muse in a heart not quite swellin'
I'm loving the best of a friend I see needin'
But I know not the beast there that I must've been feedin'

For Icarus flew on light winds of his passion
And took heavenly substance far from earthier fashion
So glib by design of unworldly ambation (sic)
He mistook his wings for the immortal ration

I laughingly try to enjoy a friend's playing
But instead am mistaken for a jealous Knight slaying
Yes I love her proud music as she knows how to reach me
Yet through years now I fear how much more she could teach me

But Capri in fun I do solemly sware
That my visions have humor, ironic... aware
That essence and dreaming, so culturally blind
A sucker is born each new moment behind

So come all ye concernings and let's put them to rest
The metaphore's meaning does not alter my blest
For genuine caring is transcending the pain
For though a genius I've seen, I'll a good man remain!
ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Apr 03 - 04:47 PM

Sonnet 24/01/02                        DCL

A sonnet is a frozen tear, a kiss,
Preserved in fourteen lines. It is a pearl
Of layered thought, a gem too bright to miss
When set on page: One blossom, to unfurl
To perfect flower. As amber, sealed soul
In timeless tomb, it can show time long past,
Or hold this instant in it's grasp. The whole
Of heart upon one single page, to last
Beyond even our dreams, it seems a sip,
Distilled to essence. Refined within mind,
Lines sing sweet song, and rhymes in patterns slip,
To weave image that leaves mere vision blind.
A single chord, to resound in one's heart:
Echo of past that might our future start.

Subject: RE: Shakespeare... Sonnet 22
From: CapriUni
Date: 01 May 03 - 07:34 PM

Beatiful, Bruce! And so true!