[A reader commented yesterday on this poem’s original post, on Valentine’s Day 2015, reminding me I had even written it (and might have republished it yesterday).]
Shakespeare asked whether he should compare “thee,”
and, having considered, decided not.
Than summer’s day, he thought that she (or he)
was more lovely and temperate, less fraught
with hot outbursts when out from under shade,
less subject than springtime to shaking winds,
and proof against nature’s custom to fade
and leave you bereft of comforting friends.
But he acknowledged his lover’s sad date
with mortality, foresaw the decline
that was theirs and all mankind’s final fate,
and penned eternal lines to serve as shrine:
They would stop his lover from turning gray,
so long as their words lived another day.
| Copyright © 2015, 2017 by Moristotle |
Yous was almost as good as Billy's.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ed! In reading mine again, I'm struck that it is pretty good, isn't it? Damned clever too, the contortion of language to comply with the "rules of grammar." I suppose that this is another thing that I owe our colleague James Knudsen's father, Morris, who taught me Latin in high school. Latin word order was very flexible and probably easier to read than English that has been similarly contorted, since English - unlike Latin (and German) - doesn't have so many word endings to indicate "cases," etc. Language - it has been a love affair of my lifetime.
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