Shakespeare’s sonnets are like small engravings, intricate, balanced and memorable. I studied his plays and poetry many years ago in my Arts degree, and have always loved them. Now, I can browse through them and enjoy the luxury of reading them for their own sake.
I’ve set myself a challenge of posting one of his sonnets a day. Today is day one, so I’ll start with sonnet 1:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s Rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
PIty the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
My thoughts: in this gentle reproach, the poet teaches the young, beautiful woman to procreate, to let her beauty be reflected in her ‘tender heir’. We all must age and die, and the law of nature is that life continues in the fertile couplings of plants, animals, and people. This young woman is in love with her self, feeds on her own beauty, starves others of her abundance, and will be ultimately consumed by death.
A hard truth wrapped in gentle lines.
