These were read at Sophie by Agnes Lutz and Mary Schwyzer

Sonnets by William Shakespeare

Dear Graham and Cie., We will attend tomorrow at the Rosengarten. Eric probably with a poem by Poe (not the Raven) and I will try it with sonnett 144 or 151 by Shakespeare. Pls find enclosed the text.

Sonnett 151

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.

That is a hard one to explain, but I think very interesting. cheater = seducer ?; gross treason = crude deception; doth = does; drudge = worker;

Sonnett 144

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil,
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

G - the battle between good and evil in spirit; tempteth = tempts; fiend = enemy; ne'er = never; fire out = eject, throw out ;

Hi Graham, Just wanted to tell you, late though, that I have chosen the 13th Sonnet from Shakespear. See ya, Mary

Sonnet 13

O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
No longer yours than you yourself here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination: then you were
Yourself again after yourself's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know
You had a father: let your son say so.

G - well that is a tough one ... some words: semblance = resemblance, similarity; in lease = waiting for a buyer; determination = goal, target; decease = death; your issue = your child; barren rage = the bare anger; unthrifts = those who do not prepare, or save?

flower

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