XXVII
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind to see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new
Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.


















12 Comments:
Did you write this?? I mean are these your own words? It's beautiful! Do you write poetry? I'd like to read some of them.
Gosh I really love it! I can't believe you wrote it yourself.. did you!?!?
Shakespeare. Ah. Beautiful. No wonder.. all the use of "thee" and "thy" and "thou"... pretty neat.
Pardon my ignorance.
heavens not my words!... the Bard's. You can find ALL the sonnets here:
aethlos.com/sonnets
Of all the people to get mistaken for, you can do a lot worse than Master Shakespeare!
TRUE DAT tony! i've been studying the sonnets for so many years that i forget everyone doesn't recognize them, or at least their first lines, so i refer to them by their numbers (like all my professors did). I -have- written several poems in my life, but i've been kind enough to never foist them on any strangers.
Foist - now there's a good word!
or "never to foist" if anyone prefers i don't split the infinitive like star trek... to boldy go....
Well, it's appropriate in this case to point out that a good deal of these so-called rules of English grammar only came about in the Victorian era - barely a hundred years ago! - when the powers that be (were?) decided to bring the English language closer in line with Latin.
Shakespeare splits his infinitives, so I shouldn't have any qualms about it. A lot of the time, I find it sounds ugly so tend to avoid it myself, but to be honest I'd not even noticed the one in your post.
::sigh:: you just made my eyes droop and my heart beat faster. You ought to do an Audio Post for us one day, whilst reading a Sonnet.
It seems Shakespeare had a little trouble with his iambic pentameter in this sonnet. At first I thought you had mis-copied it, so I checked. Your version is the same as the version in my complete works. That's not really like him. Usually he get the meter perfect. Just to correct a typo in one of the comments, Latinate grammar for English is a product of the Neoclassical period--the Age of Reason--not the Victorian period.
--Ed Deluzain
www.xanga.com/IronKnee
i actually typed this from memory--as it is one of my favorites, so i wouldn't have been surprised if i botched it... in fact, i'm STILL trying to find a PRINTED tennyson... "as when with downcast eyes we muse and brood...." because i'm not sure what the last line is... there are variations on the web.... is it: "each had lived in the other's mind and speech"? or "each had lived in either's mind and speech"? Does anyone have the answer to this??? I lost my tennyson in central park years ago....
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