stardust

"SONNET 105." Author: William Shakespeare.

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.

Author: William Shakespeare.

"SONNET 112." Author: William Shakespeare.

Your love and pity doth th´impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you approve green my bad, my good allow??
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others´voices, that my adder´s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides me thinks ARE DEAD.

Author: William Shakespeare.
Well, I hope you enjoy these awesome Sonnets, as much as I do. I love them!!... Hugs, Stardust.

MetricalSonneteer

My favourite is 55, I think...

But thanks for Shaking me with these two...

Mark Allinson

Hi, Stardust,

Yes, these are great sonnets, aren't they!

I think my fav is 73.

I notice that line 4 of 112 is not quite right - perhaps a transcription error, or a variant I don't know.

Most texts give the line as:

"So you o'ergreen my bad, my good allow?"

Which means that the friend covers (or "over-greens") the poet's faults, like a layer of ivy growing on a building covers any flaws in the brickwork with its green leaves.

Mark

stardust

Thank you Metrical and Mark for viewing these Sonnets!! I love reading William Shakespeare, my favourite Poet and the greatest of all times. Again, thank you for your lovely comments!! I wish, I could write like him, but I don´t. I do the best I can. See you at the Forum!! I would like to read some of your poems. Sincerely, Stardust.

MetricalSonneteer

"my favourite Poet and the greatest of all times"

I'd refrain from that saying. Kindly excuse my harshness, but William Shakespeare was a poet who - though amazing - could hardly be called the greatest of all. Let's talk just about English for a moment, Shakespeare was a complex person who wrote complex arguments, which is hardly what can be said constitutes perfect poetry.

In recent times I decided I'd focus on learning free-verse, a task that will probably forever be too difficult for me to master. Poetic licence is far easier to utilise in metrical writings. I started by writing tiny verses of very simple arguments that have deep philosophy. Something like:

Sometimes I wish
You had never opened your eyes -
Your lashes are all I ever wanted.

This is a clear example of a simple message, compromise for the beauty you have rather than risk going further. The moment the lashes open, you will see the eyes, and those eyes might not be as beautiful as the lashes that you see no more. The argument is simple, and the argument is beautiful (whether or not the poetry is), but it needn't be complex.

Shakespeare was a complex fellow. A great tool to use in his plays, it doesn't necessarily make his poetry better; but people find his writings charming. I bet you that if those sonnets were published 50 years ago instead of at the time, and if it were not the most lauded entertainer in England who published them, they would never contain the most quoted line in poetry, they would not be printed as much as back then, and they would not have stories written about them (such as Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."). The sonnets contain that type of subtlely of manipulating language (135) that is very typical of Shakespeare's entertaining approach to the Elizabethan crowds in his populist plays.

Language can be manipulated, and Shakespeare is one of the masters who did that in English. English, however, is just not well-suited enough to be funny when manipulated... I tell you this as a Hebrew poet, and as a person who can more-or-less understand Aramaic in its most complex syntax-forms after 30 minutes of wall-basing (I study Talmud, which basically means I study 1,500 year-old religious law through obscure stories in very colloquial dialects of a foreign language): English is not very well-suited for all these word-plays as Hebrew and Aramaic (and Arabic) are, and proof is that the art of tweaking has been developed to a FAR superior extent in Hebrew than English. It's in the grammar - Hebrew's built for that stuff.

English can rely, on the other hand, on its much vaster vocabulary. A vocabulary that comes to replace the fact that it doesn't decline its nouns as well as Latin (or Hebrew noun-forms), nor conjugate its verbs to the same extent as Arabic. To get all the small meanings through, English has a HUGE resevoir of semantic tradition, a tradition that - to achieve parallel beauty - requires use of the PERFECT WORDS in the perfect order (Coleridge's definition of poetry).

Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare's works, I memorise and translate his sonnets and I act his plays. I even write in Elizabethan language myself sometimes, and cram more meaning into less words - but it's all fantasy. To achieve the beauty of poetic message conveyed best in the simplest of words, without all the complex themes that nurture academic destruction of poetry, one must take advantage of the language - and the right type of advantage. To date, I have not seen a poet who matches the brilliance of Yeats (a traditionalist modernist) in bringing tears to the public's eyes through his depth reflected in his plain wording.

Not to say - by any means - that I follow it well, but we could all take a leaf out of Yeats's books, especially his poem "Adam's Curse".

And that's why I don't regard shakespeare as the best English-language poet. I'm sorry if at any point I was being harsh, I'm just stating my opinion here.

Thanks for sharing the sonnets again, have a nice day!
Jonathan

stardust

HI JONATHAN!! WOW!! I haven´t expected to receive such wonderful piece of English Writing, the one you have sent to me. I am so glad that, you have stopped by and made some comments about Shakespeare´s Sonnets. Before I continue with my reply, I would like to tell you that: "I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL WRITER OR POET". If you take a quick look over my little poems, you will soon realize that, it is only my heart and spiritual thoughts along the verses and stanzas. Perhaps, some of them contains a bit of Philosophy hidden in the Metaphors I often use. I do not write like William Shakespeare or any of the other Great Poets of All Times. I wish, I could!!One of my favourite ones is Poet T. Coleridge, from the 19th Century in England. I could say that, I am just another "Nobody", who loves reading Literature and Science Subjects. About Writing, I do only the best I can. I am a simple and average woman, who greatly admires "TALENTED PEOPLE!!" I just write in a very simple way, trying to convey my inner thoughts and feelings, in whatever I write. It could be an Essay, or a Short Story or a Poem or even a Song. I am so perplexed at your TALENT IN MASTERING ENGLISH. Is it English your Mother´s Language or a Second Language??...In my case, English is my Second Language. I come from a European background, a bit mixed, like Northern Italian, Swiss, French and Catalagne (Spain). So, none of my parents spoke English. I learnt English in School and College, and also -of course- by living in the States. You are so so young, and so CLEVER!! You have the whole world and future in front of you. I am 52years old, and just a Teacher and a Nurses Assistant. I am a DREAMER!! My heart is full of DREAMS. My new hubby is 66 years old. He is a Scientist, a Medical Doctor and a Chief Surgeon of the Emergency Room at a Public Hospital, in the foot of South America. He speaks several Languages with a foreign accent. I am PROUD of him!!..So, I have been studying the ENGLISH LANGUAGE, since I was a little girl, but it was not spoken at home. My parents did not speak English. In other words, in my daily encounters with English exposure, I achieved some knowledge, which I certainly use for my litte writings, poems and SONGS. If I get Lucky, I would try to form a "Musical Band" in the future. However, I would be in the back stage. I am not a Musician either. Nobody will be able to see me. My new hubby would like to MAKE INVESTMENTS IN THE STATES. He is about to Retire from his present activities, and go into another field. He is 66 years old. So, I encourage myself to learn from THE WISDOM of OTHER GREAT WRITERS and POETS. However, I am not among one of them. I write almost with free rhyme or little rhyme, but the content in my poems and message are really deep. If you would like to take a quick look at my little poems, you may go to "SPIRITUAL POETRY", and you will find me there. I use "Stardust", as my nick-name in this Forum. My real name is MONICA. I am an American Christian lady, a mother and a grandmother of 2 children. My family live in New York. I write poems to my Lord Jesus, and also other kind of poems. Jesus spoke ARAMEO, the language you study about. It is GREAT!! Not too many people could understand ARAMEO. It is a difficult Old Language, which was spoken in Jesus´times (2000 years ago) in what is now, Israel. How interesting!! I shall be looking forward to reading your Poetry. The way you write ENGLISH is PERFECT!! Congratulations, Jonathan!! Sincerely, Stardust. (Monica).

MetricalSonneteer

Dear Monica,

Thanks for all the praise. I can't say in the least that I'm fortunate enough to be a multilingual Swiss, but my luck is in grounded in the fact that I was raised learning three languages, one of them which I no longer remember (Yiddish) and the other two (Hebrew, English) of completely different grammatical structures. Of course, my academic speciality is not language at all.

Spirit in poems is very important. The core of poetry, if the argument doesn't exist (again, the spirit doesn't have to be "spiritual" in the emotional sense, the poem just needs some form of a theme) then the poem is just an empty shell. But my approach to poetry (as my "metrical" prefix will imply) is that ideally you learn the mathematics of technique and labour in the manual, routine stuff, until you have a native go to it and you can start focusing on emotion with little concern to your technique.

It's like learning a language. Get the grammar right, something that will require you to annoyingly analyse sentences' syntax and read all those pointless, uninteresting clauses, and THEN, when you've got technique settled into your system - you can start talking freely and contentfully. Again - that's my ideology, not everyone's.

The important thing is that your poems make your readers and you happy. I am yet to review your writings, but rest assured I will - at some stage or another. I do need to post some of my own stuff on here, though... But my English is far from perfect, as almost anyone will tell you that my registers are a little "bouncy". Of course, for a foreigner that would be more difficult to notice, just like the Italian "scuza" and "scuzi" mean the same to me, but there's a lot I have to improve. I'm 16, and don't spend my entire life talking in English, so... Well, you know.

Keep writing about Jesus and your love to the religion; it's a noble aim. I, sadly enough, am not at a level of writing religious poetry, especially in English, but all that will come in good time. I should write a poem about the Jewish-Christian relations, which is a topic in my history major, maybe showing how so much of the fighting about the Jews killing Jesus is hypocritical and/or ironic - even pointless these days. But that's another religious issue... E-mail me if you want a debate.

I'll be looking out for your writings. Take care!
Jonathan

stardust

HI Jonathan!! Oh!!...I forgot something else to add to my previous reply to you. It concerns about the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I am a USA Citizen, and a Teacher of English as a Second Language. It means that, I teach English to FOREIGN LEARNERS. However, this is not the point I would like to go to. I am not into Teaching anylonger. I am into other projects more profitable than teaching. ENGLISH is considered "THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE on DIPLOMACY and BUSINESS AFFAIRS." That event makes an Impact and makes us think that, ENGLISH is the MOST RELEVANT LANGUAGE in the WHOLE WORLD. Of course, the English Language is relevant and useful Internationally, not only for the easier access to its simple Grammar contents (certainly not like Chinese Language), but also it is greatly appreciated for its magnitude worldwide and high standards, according to "The Most Powerful Nation on Earth: the USA."
I am so proud to be an AMERICAN WOMAN!! I am also a CHRISTIAN!! I love this Forum, because one could speak whatever is in one´s heart of hearts. Sincerely, Stardust.