This is the first sonnet in Shakespeare's sonnet sequence:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
One of the things we'll be doing as we film the Sonnets Project is trying to figure out the part each sonnet plays in the full sequence in order to see that it has the best visual accompaniment in the film. It interests me how, at the very beginning of the series, Shakespeare links the fair young male subject of this poem to an abstract concept of death, and seems to tie death to the subject's sexuality.
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to post your own thoughts on these things. They will be tremendously helpful to us.