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.

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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

[redsixwing]

Oof. (But yes. I remember running across this one during some sort of a Shakespeare study and being v surprised, because we were all about 18 and 130.)

It's a beautiful piece of writing, and the parallelism in each line just sings.

[capri0mni]

It's a beautiful piece of writing, and the parallelism in each line just sings.

Indeed.

"art made tongue-tied by authority." is a punch in my solar plexis, every time.

[redsixwing]

Yeah.

"And captive good attending captain ill" gets me, too.

[capri0mni]

My mother had an "oh, wow!" reaction when she first read that one.