Day 22: A blast from the past :)

Here’s sonnet 22.  Which means I’m done with 1/7 of the project after today!  J

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XXII

  My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

  So long as youth and thou are of one date;

  But when in thee time's furrows I behold,

  Then look I death my days should expiate.

  For all that beauty that doth cover thee,

  Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

  Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:

  How can I then be elder than thou art?

  O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary

  As I, not for myself, but for thee will;

  Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary

  As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

    Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,

    Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.

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Okay, Shakespeare’s basic metaphor in this one comes from the famous Philip Sidney piece below (which might have been even more famous in Shakespeare’s time than it is today—Shakespeare’s sonnets were published just 23 years after Sir Philip Sidney’s death).

And again—just as he did in yesterday’s sonnet—Shakespeare writes an exposition of a riddle for thirteen and a half lines, and then explains that riddle in the last half line:  It’s all because the heart has been given “not to give back again”. 

Also, note the delightful syntactic ambiguity of the not in the last line:  It could be negating either the gav’st or the to give back again  J  (now that I come to think about it, the volta in yesterday’s sonnet also had this feature, and I didn’t notice that yesterday).

And that not, of course, is the volta.

Here’s the Philip Sidney poem, which even features a fancy movie-like flashback starting at line 9  J:

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My True-Love Hath My Heart

By Sir Philip Sidney

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;

There never was a bargain better driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one,

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;

He loves my heart for once it was his own;

I cherish his because in me it bides.

His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;

My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;

For as from me on him his hurt did light,

So still methought in me his hurt did smart:

Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,

My true love hath my heart and I have his.