After a couple of weeks away from Shakespeare, we are coming back for a couple of weeks before we branch out into some other writers again.  I anticipate that is how it will go until we have completed all of Shakespeare’s  sonnets.  He wrote 154 of them, but Petrarch wrote 360 poems (not all of them sonnets, Browning wrote more, and there are many by other writers I want to explore.  I can’t quite imagine getting to episode 300, but let’s see where we go!

Sonnet 11 by William Shakespeare

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay.
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish;
Look whom she best endowed she gave the more,
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.