Notes: At times, in my ecletic web browsings, I get annoyed, with it, just the all of it, and will leave off and hunt up an old poem or two to sorta re-calibrate my brain. Shakespeare's Sonnet 43 was a random choice, and on reading it, I thought, "Why didn't that show up when I searched 'shadow shadow', or 'shadow's shadow'"? I'd written a poem, maybe one of my sonnets, with shadow shadow, and thought to check, as I often do, if on the web a record of it being used. A tough search, as google will lump shadow shadow into just shadow. I think! Oh, I have to re-visit this search...brb. Well, woop!, I find it is from Bible, Ecclesiates, sorta...
quote
Words of the Spokesman,✻ king David’s son, that reigned once at Jerusalem. A shadow’s shadow, he tells us, a shadow’s shadow; a world of shadows! How is man the better for all this toiling of his, here under the sun? Age succeeds age, and the world goes on unaltered. Sun may rise and sun may set, but ever it goes back and is reborn. Round to the south it moves, round to the north it turns; the wind, too, though it makes the round of the world, goes back to the beginning of its round at last. All the rivers flow into the sea, yet never the sea grows full; back to their springs they find their way, and must be flowing still. Weariness, all weariness; who shall tell the tale? Eye looks on unsatisfied; ear listens, ill content. Ever that shall be that ever has been, that which has happened once shall happen again; there can be nothing new, here under the sun. Never man calls a thing new, but it is something already known to the ages that went before us; only we have no record of older days. So, believe me, the fame of to-morrow’s doings will be forgotten by the men of a later time.
unquote
It doesn't look that WS is lifting, harking to that passage...oh, this a new wrinkle...another search in order!...brb...Heck!...That search has me thinking on Elizabeth Barret Browinigs Sonnet 43...hmmp...there is something about love songs and poems, the whole romance thing, that bumps up against 'God and the Universe'...a phrase in German slang I learned, can't recall...under the spell of a crush, one goes off...'on and on'...nothing more romantic than two star crossed lovers adventuring through a dystopian landscape populated with metaphysics spouting villians!...hmmph...I divert...all that for sometime...shadow shadow I fancied when I wrote my poem...oh, I have to go find it to continue!...more tomorrowmorrow!....wait...I found my poem with shadow shadow, one of my 'Elizabethans' ...Sisters...and, and I cant post it here, I'm over the word cou
Moved text from memo on tablet, and, room...
Sisters
Noted my absence from your many lands
As was I a shadow of a shadow:
Gathered wind vane terns rest on the shore sands;
Flown away over a rolling wave's row.
Did I set down the poisoned jeweled cup,
Or without music to gather my steps
Reasonably refrain from climbing up
Their Jacob's Ladder to this heaven's debts?
Beyond that fence were Babylon's forked tongues
And my kin and I knew but only one
And over top back down those fearful rungs
Reached an interrogated finished run.
Chained, new clothed, shy, demur foreign sisters,
Hand in hand, questioned, translate my old fears.
DolphinWords
DolphinWords
Sonnet 43
William Shakespeare
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
quote from analysis site
Something is always lost when you paraphrase a poem, they say, but this is arguably truer of Sonnet 43 than most other poems, since much of the sonnet’s energy derives from its play on words – such as the way ‘form’ shifts from a noun to a verb in the sixth line: ‘How would thy shadow’s form form happy show’ (and look at how ‘show’, while we’re on this line, is a constriction, and yet at the same time a happy and brighter recasting, of ‘shadow’).
A Short Analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43: ‘When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see’
JUN 19
Posted by interestingliterature
unquote
shadow shadow is a double word...such I've gone on about before...and that analysis is spot on:
"'form' shifts from a noun to a verb"
☺
DavidDavid
No comments:
Post a Comment