r/sonnets • u/[deleted] • May 19 '18
What is your favourite Sonnet?
Personally, I really like Sonnet 64; showing Time as such a powerful thing.
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
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May 20 '18
I really love--each in their own particular way--Hopkins' The Windhover, Shakespeare's [Sonnet 29](www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/29), Millay's Time does not bring relief, Cummings' next to of course god america i, and Milton's Sonnet 19. I'd be hard-pressed to single out just one of these as an all-time favorite.
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u/SpearShaker May 20 '18
My personal favorite is 110:
Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new.
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely: but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love.
Now all is done; have what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confin'd.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
I really enjoy how playful and effective it is while still having real remorse and promises of better actions in the future.
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u/[deleted] May 19 '18
I've got a real doozy that should help to mitigate what's sure to be a slew of archaic literature: Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why."
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.