A Year of Mourning: Sunday Sonnet by Shakepeare

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Sunday Sonnet by Shakepeare

LXIV
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded, to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

William Shakespeare, (1564-1616)

Sonnet LXIV

When I have Seen by Time's Fell Hand Defaced.

PAINTING OF THE WEEK:

The Persistence of Time

Salvador Dali

The Persistence of time is also sometimes known as The Persistence of Memory, Melting Clocks, Soft Watches and Droopy Watches. Officially however, it is known as La persistencia de la memoria.

Created in 1931 by Salvador Dali and owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934, this seminal work of surrealistic art is certainly Dali’s and the Surrealist movements most recognisable icon. The painting represents Dali’s thoughts on softness and hardness, which was a theme of much of his work during that part of his life.

The imagery of The Persistence of Time is often read as an illustration of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, where gravity can be seen to distort time.

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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents:
A honeymoon delight,
A joy of love at sight,
That ages in an hour
My song be like a flower!
I have loved airs that die
Before their charm is writ
Along a liquid sky
Trembling to welcome it.
Notes, that with pulse of fire
Proclaim the spirit's desire,
Then die, and are nowhere
My song be like an air!
Die, song, die like a breath,
And wither as a bloom;
Fear not a flowery death,
Dread not an airy tomb!
Fly with delight, fly hence!
'Twas thine love's tender sense
To feast; now on thy bier
Beauty shall shed a tear.

Robert Bridges

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

Dear Child of Nature, let them rail!
-- There is a nest in a green dale,
A harbour and a hold;
Where thou, a Wife and Friend, shalt see
Thy own heart-stirring days, and be
A light to young and old.

There, healthy as a shepherd boy,
And treading among flowers of joy
Which at no season fade,
Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
Shalt show us how divine a thing
A Woman may be made.

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh,
A melancholy slave;
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.

-William Wordsworth

Lonely, my mind abandons itself,
Longing to return.
Our good times dormant,
My black heart laments.

Sitting, I still hear your feet shuffle.
Wind echoes the chimney,
Sweeping in reality, Moaning.
Torn, the clock ticks.

I caught a star as it tumbled
Down the sky. Fell frail
In the night, you moved from
Darkness you saw the light.

Eyelids graves, glossed with tears.
Wrinkles shattered glass
Like grim cracks crawling, etching,
The empty walls in your room.

Aged eyes slowly close forever.

The Light, by Leah O'Rourke
Copyright 2006

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be." ~J.D. Salinger, 1945, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti