Another winter
storm last night L and I experienced this one, too, am eigenen Leib (on my drive to Ann
Arbor and back). Here’s to hoping that
tomorrow’s drive (dropping off my daughter) is easier … Today’s sonnet:
_____________________________________
CLI
Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self
prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther
reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her 'love,' for whose dear love I rise and
fall.
_____________________________________
The yet at the beginning of line 2, the lest at the beginning of line 4, the for at the beginning of line 5, the but in the Petrarchan position are
turns. The main volta is the no in the Shakespearean position, and
the poem is heavy enough
(especially with all that enhambement and the cæsuræ) that Shakespeare repeats the word conscience in the closing couplet in order to connect back to lines
1–2. Another one tomorrow (if I return
alive from my drive).
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