NPM - Shakespeare, Sonnets 77
Apr. 23rd, 2011 10:59Happy birthday, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
recessional!
Not exactly the most festal sonnet, but still one of my absolute favorites--I had to do a project on this one and recite it to the class in high school, and it's actually way more clever than it looks on first read.
It was either this or 72, which manages to be a lament and a string of sexual puns at the same time. And that is why Shakespeare is, 400 years later, still the best. Happy birthday, WS!
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.
recessional!Not exactly the most festal sonnet, but still one of my absolute favorites--I had to do a project on this one and recite it to the class in high school, and it's actually way more clever than it looks on first read.
It was either this or 72, which manages to be a lament and a string of sexual puns at the same time. And that is why Shakespeare is, 400 years later, still the best. Happy birthday, WS!
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.