Saturday, January 25, 2014

Final weekend :(

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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