Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Hello, Scholars! I apologize for missing school today -- it was unanticipated! For today, please continue to practice working with Shakespeare’s sonnets. Choose one poem from below (or you are free to find another one online) and read it several times. Try reading it aloud or with someone else. Then, on a sheet of loose-leaf paper, do the following: 1. write a line-by-line modern translation, just like you did with Sonnet 18. 2. write a one-paragraph explanation of the meaning of the poem (in other words, what’s he talkin’ ‘bout?”)

If you cheated on the last assignment and just took the easy way out by looking up a modern translation online, here’s your chance to redeem yourself! It’s okay if this isn’t 100% perfect or accurate. The important thing is that you practice reading, decoding, and interpreting ol’ Will Shakespeare’s language.

This activity may be done alone or with a partner. Whichever option you choose, it is due Friday 5/4.

Sonnet 27 Sonnet 116

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, Let me not to the marriage of true minds The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; Admit impediments. Love is not love But then begins a journey in my head Which alters when it alteration finds, To work my mind, when body's work's expired: Or bends with the remover to remove: For then my thoughts--from far where I abide-- O no! it is an ever-fixed mark Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, It is the star to every wandering bark, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Save that my soul's imaginary sight Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Within his bending sickle's compass come: Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. But bears it out even to the edge of doom. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, If this be error and upon me proved, For thee, and for myself, no quiet find. I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet 29 Sonnet 73 When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes That time of year thou mayst in me behold I all alone beweep my outcast state, When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, In me thou see'st the twilight of such day Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, As after sunset fadeth in the west; Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, Which by and by black night doth take away, With what I most enjoy contented least; Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, Like to the lark at break of day arising As the death-bed, whereon it must expire, From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, That then I scorn to change my state with kings. To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.