Look at this! Another April has arrived, bringing another Poetry Month.

Caught between time-zones, I've been a bit woozy and tired. A part of me is so thankful to be back in New England for Spring - this is the place to fete the season. Feel though that I'm missing something, that I've left something behind, though. (Perhaps it's just the Jet-Lag.)

From you have I been absent in the spring... (Sonnet 98)

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

- William Shakespeare

Happy Spring, Happy Poetry Month. Maybe with a bit of time, that rhythm (or whatever it is) I've lost will find its way back.

More from Pavel in honor of Shakespeare's Birthday:


"A few years ago I suggested sonnet 74 for Shakespeare's traditional birthday, also death-day. That is an optimistic one about the survival of his ideas beyond the grave as "the better part of me." I imagine it to be the poet's own epitaph. More typical of the sonnets' gloomy meditations on evanescence, and the grieving for loss of friends, and the small consolations of memorial, is the equally excellent sonnet 65. Here, in all its originally printed glory, with unexpurgated long-s's that look like f's:

65

SInce braſſe,nor ſtone,nor earth,nor boundleſſe ſea,
But ſad mortallity ore-ſwaies their power,
How with this rage ſhall beautie hold a plea,
Whoſe action is no ſtronger then a flower?
O how ſhall ſummers hunny breath hold out,
Againſt the wrackfull ſiedge of battring dayes,
When rocks impregnable are not ſo ſtoute ,
Nor gates of ſteele ſo ſtrong but time decayes?
O fearfull meditation , where alack,
Shall times beſt Iewell from times cheſt lie hid?
Or what ſtrong hand can hold his ſwift foote back,
Or who his ſpoile or beautie can forbid ?
O none,vnleſſe this miracle haue might,
That in black inck my loue may ſtill ſhine bright.

Happy 446, Bill!"

I'm 39 right now, for all those who are innerested. I love my crow's feet and my smile lines. I honestly think, too, that I'm a much nicer person then I was at, say, 13 or 26 (marriageable, then old-maidish at the time of the poet).

II.

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd 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 praise 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 it cold.

Yes, this is a classic theme and, yes, it's fodder for further posts this month. Just wanted to have my, sigh, all too prosaic rebuttal out there for posterity.

(Happy Birthday, Bill, by the way. How old would you be now?)

My, how the month flew by. Figured that I'd close up shop for another year with a favorite Shakespeare Monologue:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." — Jaques (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

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Until next year!