End of break :(

Blogging before driving my daughter back to Ann Arbor:

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LXXIX

  Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,

  My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;

  But now my gracious numbers are decay'd,

  And my sick Muse doth give an other place.

  I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument

  Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;

  Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent

  He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.

  He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word

  From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,

  And found it in thy cheek: he can afford

  No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.

    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,

    Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.

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One of the more complex sonnets  J  Full of turns: the whilst at the very beginning means the comma at the end of that phrase is a turn; the but at the beginning of line 3; the yet at the beginning of line 7; the and in in line 9; the and at the beginning of line 11; the then at the beginning of the closing couplet; the since at the beginning of the last line.  In a sonnet with this many turns, Shakespeare shows some lovely special effects for ornamentation: the mesodiplosis of alone in the first two lines to mark the opening, for example, and the more complex parallel construction in lines 9–11.  More tomorrow—