Sonnet 75 by William Shakespeare

Nov 19, 2011 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 comments

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet seasoned show’rs are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight
And by and by clean starvèd for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

Click here for the modern version of this sonnet.

The advantage of writing sonnets in this century is that you have innumerable excellent models of the form to learn from. The disadvantage stems from the same truth; you will rarely touch on anything that has not been written down by someone much more talented than you before. In my own poem, The Rape of Tamar and the Half-life of Joy, I was attempting to show how everything we desire (wholesome or unwholesome), will disappoint us the moment after we enjoy the treasured thing and I hoped to demonstrate that such disappointment is universal and inescapable in this life. Basically, I was trying to find a very pretty way of saying that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.This morning I read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75 (reproduced above) and I had one of those pleasantly humbling experiences where you realize your lack of originality places you in the company of greater minds than your own. Shakespeare’s poem captures the tension between the desire of the pursuit and the satisfaction of possession that I was trying to show in my own poem. But, in his sonnet, he does so by focusing on a single localized desire, a desire fixed on a particular point that has no other object than his muse. I love this poem not least because I see in it my own thoughts refined. I enjoy it the way that a thieving butler enjoys having the same cup as the king.

Submit a Comment