Sonnet 86 (Sunday)

I have an eight page paper due at 9 a.m. tomorrow, and this had to be the afternoon when it had to start snowing again  L  But here’s today’s sonnet:

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LXXXVI

  Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

  Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

  That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

  Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

  Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

  Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

  No, neither he, nor his compeers by night

  Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

  He, nor that affable familiar ghost

  Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

  As victors of my silence cannot boast;

  I was not sick of any fear from thence:

    But when your countenance fill'd up his line,

    Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

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The volta’s obvious:  It’s the but at the beginning of the closing couplet.  Now on to the paper—