Shakespeare Competition Sonnets

8/12/2019 Shakespeare Competition Sonnets

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SONNET 12

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.



SONNET 18

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.



SONNET 29

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,

Featur'd 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.



SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not loveWhich 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 wandering 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 proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.



SONNET 123

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old;

And rather make them born to our desire,

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,Not wondering at the present nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be;

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.



Notes For # 12

count (1): count the chimes.

hideous (2): The exact meaning here is likely derived from the Old French hisde meaning dread .

Thus we have a balanced antithesis in brave/day and hideous/night.

prime (3): peak; also a continuation of the extended time metaphor as prime was the first hour

of the day, usually 6 a.m. or the hour of sunrise (OED).

sable (4): darkest brown. Note the extensive color imagery (as we also see in Sonnet 73) --

violet, sable, green, silver, white.

all silver'd o'er (4): The original, Q's or siluer'd ore, was changed by Malone (ed. 1780) to all

silver'd o'er , due to Malone's insistence that or was a printing mistake. However, some editors

leave or , believing it refers to the heraldic color gold (see Tucker ed. 1924).

Malone's simple explanation seems to make most sense, especially if we compare Hamlet :

Hamlet. His beard was grizzled--no?

Horatio. It was, as I have seen it in his life,

A sable silver'd. (1.2.242)

canopy (6): shelter.

erst (6): formerly.

summer's green (7): Shakespeare here uses a literary device known as synecdoche (by which aspecific part is taken for the whole); thus summer's green is the bounty of crops.

girded up (7): tied up tightly (the first use of the term as such in English).

And...beard (8-9): One of the most striking metaphors in the sonnets. The harvested crops,

carried on the bier, wrapped tightly with protruding pale hulls, are personified as the body of an

old man, carried on a cart or wagon to church, wrapped tightly in his shroud, with his

protruding white beard.

breed (14): children.

brave (14): challenge.



Notes For #29

in disgrace (1): out of favor.

beweep (2): weep over (my outcast state).

outcast state (2): The poet's "outcast state" is possibly an allusion to his lack of work as an actor

due to the closing of the theatres in 1592 (during an outbreak of plague). It also could be a

reference to the attack on Shakespeare at the hands of Robert Greene. Please see the

commentary below for more on Shakespeare and Greene.

bootless (3): useless. Shakespeare uses the word seventeen times in the plays.

CompareOthello:

The robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief;

He robs himself that spends a bootless grief. (1.3.225-6)

Compare also Titus Andronicus:

For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain;

And they have nursed this woe, in feeding life;

In bootless prayer have they been held up,

And they have served me to effectless use:

Now all the service I require of them

Is that the one will help to cut the other. (3.1.75-80)

Interestingly, the phrase "bootless cries" appears in Edward III, an anonymous play that many

now believe Shakespeare wrote.

look upon myself (4): i.e., I become occupied with self-reflection.

Featured like him (6): i.e., the features (physical beauty) of some other more attractive man.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/londondisease.html

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/othello_1_3.html


http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/titus_3_1.html



http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/edwardIII.html






http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/londondisease.html





Notes For #123

CXXIII. In this Sonnet, which is probably to be connected with that next before, the poet reverts

to the doctrine which had appeared previously, in lix., that there is nothing new, but that all

things recur in unending succession. Things grand and stupendous which seem to be new are

not really such. They are but re-presentations, dressings-up again, of what we have seenbefore, though the sight may have passed from our memory, and though there may be no

historical record. The power of Time, thus limited to bringing back again what is old, the poet

defies.

2. Thy pyramids. To be understood of anything grand and stupendous. Newer might . Power

lately exercised.

5. Dates. Terms of existence. Admire. Wonder at.

7. And rather make them born to our desire. And prefer to regard them as really new, just

"born." Q. "borne."

11. What we see do lie. By pretending to be new when not really so.

12. Made more or less by thy continual haste. Thus preventing an accurate register from being

kept.

14. Scythe. Q. "syeth."

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/59.html




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Shakespeare Competition Sonnets