I like Shakespeare but am struggling with the words every now and then. Sonnet 27 however, is easy to understand, pensive and beautiful: Have a look and hopefully you will find, that many things have changed, but love might have not.
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travail tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired.
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
The “travail†mentioned in the second line can equally mean travel or painful and laborious work. How unappealing it must have been to travel in the time of Shakespeare (1564-1616) when these two words were used synonymously. The dear repose (line 3) must have been at an inn after a long day on horseback or in a horse-drawn stagecoach in the days where a hole in the ground and streets were impossible to differentiate. Beds in those times were an affair of vermin and straw sacks, hardly the repose expected for composing poetry or amorous enterprise.
Not surprisingly, Shakespeare in love cannot doze off. “Drooping eyelids open wide†he thinks of her or him, jealous of the blind who see in the darkness where he sees rien; far from home and left behind (“ from far where I abideâ€).
Then he moans that only his mind makes the dark night beautiful by recalling his or her shadow. Shadow means image, an idea that the word photography, painting with light, reminds us of. However, at night he is despondent, and during the day, his bones ache. He comes to an end with the complaint that he cannot find quiet neither for him nor for his love.
Some call this Sonnet meditative and calm. (To me it rather sounds depressed.) With the marvels of contemporary civilization: air conditioned cars, smooth highways, sanitary bed sheets, no insects crawling in bed, spring mattresses, hot water, Aspirin and sedatives, I am convinced that Shakespeare would have not equated travel and pain anymore. On the other hand, he might have written less beautifully. How does Harry Limes in “The Third Man†declare:
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed?but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
So, all you propitious poets, maybe you ought to suffer more to write like Shakespeare, or maybe you do not need to suffer at all, since you are no Shakespeare anyway. I am no Shakespeare, but in my comfortable bed, with a full bodied glass of port, I hope to take pleasure the arts and my little unexcited existence.
Author Resource:
You can find me wallowing on natural bedding enjoying Shakespeare and palate pleasing pleasures.
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