A Shakespeare sonnet a day. Day two, sonnet no. 29:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man’s art, and that mans’ scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
My thoughts: This is one of the bard’s simpler sonnets, playing out one theme: the state of envy, of loss and lack and discontent; and its antidote, love, the remembrance of being loved and loving, the wealth and abundance it confers. I love the piling up of discontents, and their reversal, the image of the lark singing at heaven’s gate. My soul rises up when I read this, a gift in troubled times.
