5 PETRARCHAN SONNETS Title: Petrarch, ‘O joyous, blossoming, ever- blessed flowers!’. O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers! ‘Mid which my pensive queen her footstep sets; O plain, that hold’st her words for amulets And keep’st her footsteps in thy leafy bowers! Title: Sir Thomas Wyatt, ‘Whoso List to Hunt’. Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind… Title: Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 31 from Astrophil and Stella With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies; How silently, and with how wan a face. What, may it be that even in heavenly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries? Title: Christina Rossetti, ‘In an Artist’s Studio’ One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness… Title: Claude McKay, ‘To Winter’ Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows! There is a subtle sweetness in the sun, The ripples on the stream’s beast gaily run, The wind more boisterously by me blows… 5 SHAKESPEAREAN SONNETS Title: Sonnet 24 Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart; My body is the frame wherein ‘tis held, And perspective it is the painter’s art. For through the painter must you see his skill, To find where your true image pictured lies; Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still, That hath his windows glazed with thine eye. Title: Sonnet 98 From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trim Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer’s story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew Title: Sonnet 29 When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Title: Sonnet 106 When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express’d Even such a beauty as you master now. Title: Sonnet 138 When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.