If my dear love were but the child of state,
It could for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time’s love, or to Time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
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No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls.
It fears not Policy, that Heretic,
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
But all alone stand hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of Time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
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A few notes: One of the trickier Sonnets. Opinions vary on some features.
my dear love: the love that I feel.
state: here, I think, the basic meaning is “circumstance,” yet it isn’t coincidental that “state” can have other meanings, including “high position” and “nation.” Shakespeare expertly played on such resonances.
for Fortune’s bastard...unfathered: the offspring of Fortuna, promiscuous goddess of chance, and so, illegitimate
accident: in the language of the era, more than a mishap, it means any chance variation; the opposite of “essence” in Aristotelian philosophy
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime: The closing couplet is something of a puzzle and has received various glosses. The meaning may have been deliberately cloaked to outsiders.
Under one aspect, Sonnet 124 reads as a statement of the poet’s loyalty to a virtuous friend and a warning against sycophants. Some interpreters believe Shakespeare had in mind a specific political application, now impossible to identify for sure. Somehow the piece seems to suit the present occasion.
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Waiting for the Barbarians
WB Reeves
The times are out of joint.
All seems confused, with reason at odds with hope, desire and fear.
This poem by C.P. Cavafy seems suited to the moment but perhaps that is because it is timeless and thus suited to the human condition itself. At least it seems so to me.
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have
not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.
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Week ln Poetry:
Come See the Blood Of the Streets
Waiting for the Barbarians
Lanier and Longfellow
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Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense:
The creative act Kenneth Rexroth
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