Friday, April 20, 2007

Poetry Friday 46

In this week's episode of "Doctor Who", the Doctor revealed to Martha that his home planet, Gallifrey, had been destroyed in the last great Time War with the Daleks, and that set me to thinking about the destructive nature of Time, which led me back to Shakespeare, again:

Sonnet 19

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.


Sonnet 2

WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tottered weed of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more prasie deserved thy beauty's use
If thou couldst answer, 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
This were to be new made when thou art old
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st cold.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent! Thanks for the Shakespeare moment . . . .

Michele said...

You're welcome ! You can always count on me for a Shakespeare moment, Jules !

Anonymous said...

I saw that you added a later post about the new Tolkien book. Here's a riddle from an older Tolkien book about time:

This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.


J. R. R. Tolkien, from The Hobbit

Michele said...

Oh yes, marvellous ! I'd forgotten that riddle from The Hobbit - thanks for sharing...

(I'm waiting - with curiosity - for a library copy of The Children of Hurin...)

Mai said...

I'm not patient enough for the library which is why I am slowly drowning in a sea of books...

Michele said...

Mai, I've got a couple of dozen boxes of books cluttering up my tiny attic too - though they're mostly books I've been given, rather than books I've bought. However, I don't have the funds to buy everything I want, hence the library...

Anonymous said...

Thank you for reminding me of the lilting rhythm of his poetry. I need to read more of him.

Michele said...

At the moment I just can't seem to stop reading Shakespeare - it's as if he's taken over my head (along with that comely Time Lord !)