O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?
From Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Part I
Sonnet 50: How heavy do I journey on the way
William Shakespeare
How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,
Doth teach that case and that repose to say,
“Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!”
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
SONNET ANALYSIS
The poet draws an analogy between himself and the beast
on which he rides: “The beast that bears me, tired with
my woe, / Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,”
as though the non-physical weight of the poet’s sadness
factors into the burden that the beast must carry.
Similarly, the groan that the animal makes prompts
the poet to recall his own sad state in traveling
farther away from the youth: “For that same groan
doth put this in my mind: / My grief lies onward and
my joy behind.” Here, “onward” means physically forward,
but it also means into the future.
Because this future doesn’t involve the young man,
the poet is grieved. Likewise, “behind” means from
where the poet physically has traveled, but it also
means the past, which was joyful because the poet
had the affections of the youth.
Art by Fritz Zuber Buhler
O Never Say That I Was False of Heart
William Shakespeare
O never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify:
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie;
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all.
Mercy
William Shakespeare
From The Merchant of Venice
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice.
Sonnet 54: O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
by William Shakespeare
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses;
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
Sonnet 29 When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
William Shakespeare
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.
Analysis
The Shakespearean love poem, Sonnet 29, begins at a state
of utter dejection and rises to a state of bliss.
In Shakespeare’s love poem, Sonnet 29, Shakespeare elegantly
moves the speaker from the lowest possible state in which
a human being can exist, to a state that nearly reaches
the angels.
To follow the movement of the sonnet, the reader needs to
notice Shakespeare’s artful use and placement of a single
word: State. The word, state (as in state of being, or station
in life) is used three times, toward the beginning, middle, and
end of the poem. The reader should notice how that ‘state’ changes
in these various positions in the 14 lines of the sonnet.
Doing so will elevate the reader, along with the poem, from
the lowest state of being, to the highest
Under the Greenwood Tree
William Shakespeare
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i’ the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleas’d with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
William Shakespeare
Store well Life’s sheaves, the grains of thought–
Your harvest will be good,
If sheaves are bound by ties of love,
And evil you’ve withstood.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, “Gathering of the Sheaves
symphonylove 