Volta project, #107

A somewhat darker sonnet for this dark afternoon:

________________________________________

CVII

  Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

  Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

  Can yet the lease of my true love control,

  Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom.

  The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,

  And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

  Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,

  And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

  Now with the drops of this most balmy time,

  My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,

  Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime,

  While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:

    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

________________________________________

Come to think of it, this is only dark because of a few dark words (such as “doom” and “sad” and so on).  The first two quatrains, with their lush but depressing description of natural setting, vaguely remind me of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach.  I’m seeing maybe two turns:  The now at the beginning of the third quatrain with its shift from the setting, and the when at the beginning of the final line, which contrasts the lyric I’s fate with stuff that will die away.  Now I’ll go away and try to finish the grading that’s due early tomorrow.