Sunday Sonnet by Shakespeare

XXIX
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 possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's 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.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnet XXIX
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eye's


PAINTING OF THE WEEK:

The Funeral of Shelley

Louis Edouard Fournier, 1857-1917

Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet, drowned in 1822. His yacht was wrecked in a storm in the Gulf of Spezzia, Italy. His body was cremated and his remains later buried at the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Fournier's painting (1889) shows the funeral pyre surrounded by three of the dead poet's closest friends. From left to right they are the author and adventurer Trelawny and Shelley’s fellow-poets Leigh Hunt and Byron. In Trelawny's own account of the event, 'Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron', he described the hot August day on which the funeral took place. Fournier chose to ignore this aspect of the description. Instead he depicted the weather as grey and cold to accentuate the sombre and dramatic mood of the piece.

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.

Goddess of Love

The Birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482–1486



Venus and Adonis

Angelica Kauffmann, 1786

She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,

Comparing it to her Adonis' breath,

And says, within her bosom it shall dwell,

Since he himself is reft from her by death:

She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears

Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

VENUS AND ADONIS PLAY BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after the Roman goddess of love. It is the brightest natural object in the night sky, except for the Moon. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it is often called the Morning Star or the Evening Star.

Size comparison of terrestrial planets (left to right): Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars