..come kiss me, sweet and twenty,/Youth's a stuff will not endure."
Although the singer of "O Mistress Mine" is equally aware as the author of Sonnet 18 that life is not forever, and we must love while we can, his attitude is not to make sense of this by trying to create something permanent in the form of a poem, but to entertain and achieve an objective of a kiss! Life is short so enjoy it while you can, is the message of the song. Unlike a written poem, a song ends with the end of a performance, so it celebrates joy, not permanency.
The fact that the song occurs during a play also means that the audience likely wants listen to something active, rather than take time to meditate on a few lines' meaning. A person, even a lover, can go to the privacy of a room and read a sonnet, and read it several times, and get a different meaning from the sonnet every time. He or she can even read it later, after the love affair has ended, or the relationship with the author has changed....
Of course, the question arises: why is the Andy Williams song a perfect theme for Romeo and not Juliet? Juliet, in contrast with Romeo, is more intelligent in her love than Romeo, and although she loves him, she does not as fully embrace his absolute belief that love will make everything come out right. "Though I joy in thee, / I have no joy of this contract to-night: / It is
Shakespeare Journal 9/14 Sonnets (1. I usually have to force myself to read poetry, especially sonnets about romance that seem contrived or sentimentalized. Also, I am not very good at understanding and explaining the various metaphors, hidden meanings and so on. Sonnet 18 is so famous that it has long since turned into a cliche ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and would simply not go over very well is
John Berryman's "Dream Song 14" Dream Song This poem, friends, is boring. The entire work seeks to illustrate the idea that "life, friends, is boring." It does so by being itself tremendously boring. Though the author occasionally uses exciting or interesting words and phrases, such as "flash and yearn," he does so only in the pursuit of higher boredom by showing that even these words can be sucked into a context which
Shakespeare's sonnets and John Done's songs & sonnets William Shakespeare was one of the world's most renowned playwrights the Renaissance period provided to the cultural life. John Donne was as well an important writer of the 17th century that addressed issues such as love, death, duty, in his work through different perspectives. Taking into account a common theme such as love can do a comparison of the two poets Shakespeare and
The ironic twist is the play of what is to be expected to be said and what is actually said (or, going back to the argument, what is expected from love and what actually occurs): It begins: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips' red" From here the sonnet continues with a much less pleasing list of the qualities about
The poem emotionally appealing and with such invigorating language, is easily translatable as a sermon. The reader could easily manipulate the tone of the poem with slight incensed articulation by accenting the poem as horrifying, delightful, spiritually persuasive or even amusing tone. Throughout the reading of this sonnet, despite its recognition towards God, the sonnet still mimics the consistency Donne always had in his poetry. Consider the plethora of
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