Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Back to basics.

Insofar as anyone could ever dare to call this poem "basic."

Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.


--William Shakespeare

3 comments:

moria said...

Blech, grah, ick, yuck.

Returning to the Shax sonnets after long absence this week for a class. Remembering how much I despise them, how little I think of most of them as poems, how much they do to un-endear me to their author. Ick.

More like the Good Friday poem, please.

Renaissance Girl said...

Moria--actually, I agree with you re: many of these sonnets. I think he's a master of the form, but his mastery shows up as formulaism sometimes. I just figured that folks were put off by the Berryman and the other perhaps unfamiliar contemporary stuff. Back to basics for me--that is, the poems I hunger for--tomorrow.

Renaissance Girl said...
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