Sunday, June 15, 2008

Magic Words


I picked up a small book of Shakespeare's sonnets at Barnes and Noble. I keep it on my night stand and read a few here and there. I'm enjoying so many of them, number 17 in particular. It's difficult to say that one is "better" than another. Each one is so passionate, witty and marvelously written.

-Sonnet 17-
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.

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