” It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.”William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.
~John Donne, 1572-1631

We’re back to Donne, but here he’s matured, become concerned with eternity and death and life. If you’ve never seen the movie Wit based on the play by Margaret Edson and starring Emma Thompson as Dr. Vivian Bearing, a professor of metaphysical poetry specializing in the holy sonnets of John Donne, get it. Be prepared to confront death and dying, however, in its plain and poetic pride.

I wrote a little about the movie Wit here.
The DHM says Wit is the best movie she will never, ever watch again. Be warned.

“There are a thousand ways to love a poem. The best poets make up new ways, and the new ways mostly take getting used to.~Donald Hall

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Now this one is my favorite Shakespeare sonnet! That’s the sense of humor I’ve got—and have passed on to my urchins, for better or for worse. Drama Daughter says no one understands her sense of (somewhat sarcastic) humor, but I think she and Will would have gotten along just fine.

And it ends on a gentle, almost plaintive, note: I believe my love is just as precious and special as any of those so-called beauties who get all the cliched accolades. By heaven.

I found a video for this one, too, with Snape, or Colonel Brandon as I like to call him since I don’t know Snape, aka Alan Rickman reading the sonnet:

“You cannot translate a poem into an explanation, any more than you can translate a poem into a painting or a painting into a piece of music or a piece of music into a walking stick. A work of art says what it says in the only way it can be said. Beauty, for example, cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.”~Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000), p. 117

This sonnet surprised me by appearing on three people’s lists. I don’t remember ever reading it before.

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 seest 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
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The website, No Sweat Shakespeare, has prose translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

You may see that time of year in me when few, or no, yellow leaves hang on those branches that shiver in the cold bare ruins of the choir stalls where sweet birds sang so recently. You see, in me, the twilight of a day, after the sun has set in the west, extinguished by the black night that imitates Death, which closes everything in rest. You see in me the glowing embers that are all that is left of the fire of my youth – the deathbed on which youth must inevitably die, consumed by the life that once fed it. This is something you can see, and it gives your love the strength deeply to love that which you have to lose soon.

So the poet is old, and the addressee is young. But whoever it is the poet is talking to can see what the poet is and used to be, and so age makes the young person love the poet more? Even though the inevitable parting is coming soon. (Ha! I agree with Mr. Berry, but that doesn’t stop me from trying anyway.)

The urchins asked if I was going to add a video to every one of these poetry posts, and I said no, but I couldn’t resist this one. “Dallas Bill” quotes Sonnet 73, and then he goes on to explain sonnets in general and the meaning of this sonnet in particular. Priceless.