Sonnet 44
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time's leisure with my moan;
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
Sonnet 44 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. Sonnet 44 is continued in Sonnet 45.
Structure
Sonnet 44 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which contains three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form, abab cdcd efef gg. Like many of the sonnets in the sequence, Sonnet 44 is written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre in which line is formed with five pairs of unstressed/stressed syllables.
| Stress | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / | x | / |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syllable | As | soon | as | think | the | place | where | he | would | be. |
Criticism
Critics have mentioned Sonnet 44 is directly coupled to Sonnet 45 and lacks a definite conclusion.[1]
In Music
Poeterra recorded a pop ballad version of Sonnet 44 on their album "When in Disgrace" (2014).
References
- ↑ Fineman, Joel (1986). Shakespeare's Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets. Univ of California Press. pp. 227–229. ISBN 0520054865. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
External links
.png)
| ||||||||||||||||