Dark Lady

This poem had to be in sonnet form because it is about the mysterious "Dark Lady" who is said to have inspired some of Shakespeare's Sonnets. For convenience I have printed below four of his Sonnets which I particularly had in mind. Please note I don't imagine for a moment that there is any comparison between my scribblings and the work of the Master!

Dark Lady

Is that you, peering out between the lines,

The fourteen bars he conjured for your cage?

He lured you where eternal summer shines

And promised to set you free from mortal rage.

We know a bit – he swore that you were fair –

Your lips, your breasts, the black wires on your head –

He told us how he loves your voice, but where

Does he record a single word you said?

So did he break your bondage to decay?

We neither see nor hear you. He’s to blame.

One word our greatest wordsmith didn’t say,

He didn’t even bother with your name.

What strangely lifeless immortality.

There’s only one Word speaks eternity.

        130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

   As any she belied with false compare.

        18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

64

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,

Increasing store with loss and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

   This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

   But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

   O, none, unless this miracle have might,

   That in black ink my love may still shine bright.