I subscribe to the Sonnet-A-Day email newsletter, but this one continues to be my favorite, because Ted assigned it to me to memorize. God, it was hard to understand at the time. I remember that trying to hold all the twists and turns of its power in my brain made my head explode. It was so hard not to let it all tumble out at “my lovely boy”…I have to remember that the next time I’m glibly giving someone the note to “not play the end at the beginning”

126

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.

Reminds me, every time, of Ronsard:

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant :
Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille resveillant,
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seray sous la terre et fantaume sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos :
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dés aujourd’huy les roses de la vie.

(Take that, beautiful people who won’t sleep with writers immediately! How dare you!)

The funny thing is, of course, that I think Shakespeare and Ronsard wrote better poems from the heat of the constant rejection than they would have if they’d been accepted.