Shakespeare's Sonnet 66:

[capri0mni]

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

---

You know, as of today (17 January, 2017), the top three (American) Google auto-complete results for “Shakespeare Sonnet” are:

• 116
(Let me not to the marriage of true minds),

• 18
(Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) and

• 130
(My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun).

I predict this one will rise in the rankings over the next four years.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Yeah.

[capri0mni]

Now, this poem has been a favorite of mine ever since I first encountered it, as a freshman in college. The wordplay and word pairs in each line are delicious.

So this is often a sonnet I'll look for, for individual readings on YouTube. When I first started searching I was struck that the videos made of it were most often from Russian and German accounts.

Not surprising. But it does make a point, and I think the vloggers who make their own "fanvids" of this poem, even though English is their second (or third, or fourth) language, have a better sense of the poem's meaning than the "official" study guides I've seen from American publishers.

[alatefeline]

...Huh. Thanks for the context.