Well, I had to leave Sir Patrick behind as he took a mini hiatus and I jumped ahead to finish up the sonnets (but I will go back and listen to his daily readings, because, well, that voice....)
So we continue with sonnets referencing the mysterious "fair youth" and rival poets and around 127 we are introduced to an equally mysterious "dark lady".
The most famous of this second half of the sonnets is 116 (you may recognize it as a wedding reading):
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Again, I won't reproduce each sonnet in its entirety, just some lines I enjoyed.
Sonnet 91
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments, though newfangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humor hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest.
Sonnet 94
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Sonnet 104
To me, fair friend, you never can be old.
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.
Sonnet 129
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action;...
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
***
To shun the heaven that leads me to this hell.
Sonnet 137
Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes
That they behold and see not what they see?
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is take the worst to be.
Sonnet 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies,
***
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Sonnet 147
My love is a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
And with that we bid the sonnets a fond adieu!
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