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Favorite Shakespearean Sonnet



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Tue Dec 15, 2015 3:09 am
Aley says...



What's your favorite Shakespearean Sonnet?

Don't know a lot of them? Have a list!

List

Here is my favorite.

Sonnet CXXX

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


Roman Numeral guide:
Spoiler! :
I = 1
II = 2
IV= 4
V= 5
VI= 6
IX= 9
X = 10
XIV = 14
L= 50
C = 100
CXXX = 130

Basically, if a smaller number proceeds a larger number, it is down one from the larger number. XL means 40 because it's changing the tens column and X is smaller than L. To count up, use consecutive addition of the symbol such as XXX being 30, but only use three. At four, use the down one rule such as I, II, III IV, V is 1-5
  





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Thu Feb 02, 2017 4:17 pm
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alliyah says...



Spoiler! :
I don't necessarily have an absolute favorite sonnet, 2 years ago I had to read them all for school, that was a task! I like the popular ones like 116 & 18 though. I think my English professor in High School actually had memorized & recited the one that @Aley posted, in class once (if I remember right)! I wish I had a couple of them memorized that I could just throw around randomly!


I particularly enjoy Sonnet 125 because I had to write a paper on how "obsequious" is used in it differently than in Sonnet 31, so I mostly just remember enjoying that.

Here's 125:

Were’t ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favor
Lose all and more by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savor,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
  Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul
  When most impeached stands least in thy control."
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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Thu Feb 02, 2017 4:51 pm
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Persistence says...



I like this one

Sonnet 94

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Deep thoughts remind me of unfinished
  








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