Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Sonnet 116
Read in a Stratford accent:
Sonnet 116
Read in a Stratford accent:
Sonnet 116
"The eminent Shakespearean scholar John Barton has suggested that Shakespeare's accent would have sounded to modern ears like a cross between a contemporary Irish, Yorkshire and West Country accent.
Others say that the speech of Elizabethans was much quicker than it is in modern-day Shakespeare productions."
Task:
1. Divide the poem into 3 stanzas and a couplet.
2. Work out the metre and rhyme scheme.
3. Do the next two poems have the same format?
Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time
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When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Notice the repetition "when" and "and" - notice how the word "save" means "except" here and that it is also an exceptional word in the poem's structure.
Something I like about this poem is the way it blurs the lines between self and other in order to sow doubt. Everything is allowed a degree of will: time, trees, beauty. But all also cannot escape their limitations. Even time can't prevent nature from defying oblivion.
Sonnet 12
quizlet quiz
Notice the repetition "when" and "and" - notice how the word "save" means "except" here and that it is also an exceptional word in the poem's structure.
Something I like about this poem is the way it blurs the lines between self and other in order to sow doubt. Everything is allowed a degree of will: time, trees, beauty. But all also cannot escape their limitations. Even time can't prevent nature from defying oblivion.
Sonnet 12
quizlet quiz
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shakespeare tends to use very basic grammatical words as the hinges in his sonnets. Can you remember / guess the missing words in these lines (note how often the first word of a line is a conjunction or other grammatical word).
____ I compare thee to a summer’s day?
____ art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds ___ shake the darling buds of May,
___ summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
______ too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And ____ is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair ____ fair sometime declines,
___ chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
___ thy eternal summer shall not fade,
___ lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
___ shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
___ in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
___ long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
___ long lives this, ___ this gives life to thee.
Notice the same thing here in Sonnet 73
Notice the same thing here in Sonnet 73
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
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That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Sonnet 73 sung by Paul Kelly
that time of year (1): i.e., being late autumn or early winter.
When yellow leaves... (2): compare Macbeth (5.3.23) "my way of life/is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf."
Bare ruin'd choirs (4): a reference to the remains of a church or, more specifically, a chancel, stripped of its roof and exposed to the elements. The choirs formerly rang with the sounds of 'sweet birds'. Some argue that lines 3 and 4 should be read without pause -- the 'yellow leaves' shake against the 'cold/Bare ruin'd choirs.' If we assume the adjective 'cold' modifies 'Bare ruin'd choirs', then the image becomes more concrete -- those boughs are sweeping against the ruins of the church. Some editors, however, choose to insert 'like' into the opening of line 4, thus changing the passage to mean 'the boughs of the yellow leaves shake against the cold like the jagged arches of the choir stand exposed to the cold.' Noted 18th-century scholar George Steevens commented that this image "was probably suggested to Shakespeare by our desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic isle [sic] and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch overhead, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the comparison becomes more solemn and picturesque" (Quoted in Smith, p. 148).
black night (7): a metaphor for death itself. As 'black night' closes in around the remaining light of the day, so too does death close in around the poet.
Death's second self (8): i.e. 'black night' or 'sleep.' Macbeth refers to sleep as "The death of each day's life" (2.2.49).
In me thou see'st...was nourish'd by (9-12): The following is a brilliant paraphrase by early 20th-century scholar Kellner: "As the fire goes out when the wood which has been feeding it is consumed, so is life extinguished when the strength of youth is past." (Quoted in Rollins, p. 191)
that (12): i.e., the poet's desires.
This (14): i.e., the demise of the poet's youth and passion.
To love that well (12): The meaning of this phrase and of the concluding couplet has caused much debate. Is the poet saying that the young man now understands that he will lose his own youth and passion, after listening to the lamentations in the three preceding quatrains? Or is the poet saying that the young man now is aware of the poet's imminent demise, and this knowledge makes the young man's love for the poet stronger because he might soon lose him? What must the young man give up before long -- his youth or his friend? For more on this dilemma please see the commentary below.
that time of year (1): i.e., being late autumn or early winter.
When yellow leaves... (2): compare Macbeth (5.3.23) "my way of life/is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf."
Bare ruin'd choirs (4): a reference to the remains of a church or, more specifically, a chancel, stripped of its roof and exposed to the elements. The choirs formerly rang with the sounds of 'sweet birds'. Some argue that lines 3 and 4 should be read without pause -- the 'yellow leaves' shake against the 'cold/Bare ruin'd choirs.' If we assume the adjective 'cold' modifies 'Bare ruin'd choirs', then the image becomes more concrete -- those boughs are sweeping against the ruins of the church. Some editors, however, choose to insert 'like' into the opening of line 4, thus changing the passage to mean 'the boughs of the yellow leaves shake against the cold like the jagged arches of the choir stand exposed to the cold.' Noted 18th-century scholar George Steevens commented that this image "was probably suggested to Shakespeare by our desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic isle [sic] and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch overhead, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the comparison becomes more solemn and picturesque" (Quoted in Smith, p. 148).
black night (7): a metaphor for death itself. As 'black night' closes in around the remaining light of the day, so too does death close in around the poet.
Death's second self (8): i.e. 'black night' or 'sleep.' Macbeth refers to sleep as "The death of each day's life" (2.2.49).
In me thou see'st...was nourish'd by (9-12): The following is a brilliant paraphrase by early 20th-century scholar Kellner: "As the fire goes out when the wood which has been feeding it is consumed, so is life extinguished when the strength of youth is past." (Quoted in Rollins, p. 191)
that (12): i.e., the poet's desires.
This (14): i.e., the demise of the poet's youth and passion.
To love that well (12): The meaning of this phrase and of the concluding couplet has caused much debate. Is the poet saying that the young man now understands that he will lose his own youth and passion, after listening to the lamentations in the three preceding quatrains? Or is the poet saying that the young man now is aware of the poet's imminent demise, and this knowledge makes the young man's love for the poet stronger because he might soon lose him? What must the young man give up before long -- his youth or his friend? For more on this dilemma please see the commentary below.
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