Category Archives: Sonnet Blog

I blog here about sonnets and sonnet related endeavours

By My Sweet Love’s Request:

Posted by David Emeron on

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.

But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

I cannot get through…

Posted by David Emeron on

…although I’ve worked on it, and thought it over for so long, the Xerex series without weeping.  I had been engaged in some tagging entries.  I decided to tag the series in such a way that it can be called up solely with one link.

Still, it is impossible for me to detach myself fully from these six sonnets.  They, the story of the myriad ways in which I’ve longed for my dearest love, are in every way inexorably entwined.

Once, upon a time there existed the possibility, perhaps the certainty, wherein the pages of one’s diary would be stained with tears; however these tears now fall upon one’s keyboard at best, and do not leave a visible mark upon one’s words.

In a few days will repost a sequence…

Posted by David Emeron on

…which was and is essentially the catalyst to the Shakespeare project in that the insight I gained in writing these nine sonnets caused me to understand Will Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets in a way in which I could not have done had I not written these.  I have posted a link to this sequence to the right.  See the link entitled “Notes to Myself,” which I have also included here for convenience.

Can it be that any of these are related articles:

Light at the end of the tunnel!!

Posted by David Emeron on

If you still see the space in the list, beginning with “the 101″…  which is still present as of October, 2013…

If you look toward the right column wherein I have posted links to sequences, unless by the time you have read this, my work therein has been completed, you will see within the link category named “sequences,” a space.  Of course all the link categories to the right are involving sequences, apart from the default links, the calendar, recent posts, etc.  In any case, as of this writing you will still see a space after which you will see a link for “the 101.”

This space marks the division between my previous method of linking (using menu widgets) and my new method (involving link widgets.)  The new method allows me to easily move a link from “sequences” to, for example “featured” or some other heading simply by editing the link in question and changing the category to which it belongs.  This is a great labour-saving system, but it has been a very long process, as I have set about reworking some aspects of the site.

What has inspired this post is simply that I have noticed that the list of old links is growing small!  At first It felt as though it would never be completed.  The list of sequence seemed to have grown so large, you see; and I hadn’t really taken a good look at it until just this morning.  Only a scant handful of sequence left (plus possibly a few short sequences to which I hadn’t provided links before–I have, in fact, encountered a few of those here and there as I have been going over things)

It is a good feeling to see that ones work is progressing, even when the work in question is simple “scut work,” as our beloved combat engineer might term it.   For so very long the list after the vexing break and beginning with “the 101” has been much longer than the list of finished links; or so I thought.  Apparently, it has been of junior length for a long while now, and, all the while, escaping my notice.

In any case, here it is almost finished and I hadn’t even noticed the progress I had been making.  It just seemed like a long, long, task that would never come to an end.

Today I tried something new…

Posted by David Emeron on

…and checked something off my long, long, long list. I have wanted to write some kind of series or epic based on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” This was a prophetic piece much neglected, partly because hardly anyone now alive knows what a copybook is–or was–thanks, in large part, to the widespread implementation of marxist education theory in government schools, and in fact, in most other schools as well. Continue reading →