Poems, in the form of nursery rhymes, were, for many of us, our introduction to stories. I will post a favourite poem each week. Email me your favourite poems and I will post them too.
This week, I've chosen a sonnet by Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton. It appeared originally in 1594 as part of Idea's Mirror, a collection of 64 sonnets.
What a mad, obsessive, all-consuming passion it describes. How many of us have been as lucky (or unfortunate) to experience such emotions!
The illustration is Romeo and Juliet (1884) by pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Frank Dicksee.
Sonnet XI
You not alone, when you are still alone,
O God, from you that I could private be.
Since you one were, I never since was one;
Since you in me, my self since out of me,
Transported from my self into your being;
Though either distant, present yet to either,
Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing,
And only absent when we are together.
Give me my self and take your self again,
Devise some means but how I may forsake you;
So much is mine that doth with you remain,
That, taking what is mine, with me I take you;
You do bewitch me; O, that I could fly
From my self you, or from your own self I.
Michael Drayton
Lucky AND unfortunate indeed. I think it needs a certain kind of temperament. Some people just feel more than others, I guess. To feel more joy even in the simple things but feeling sorrow so much more deeply.
Posted by: EW | Monday, November 08, 2004 at 14:59