Tonight, read the two sonnets below and answer the same questions from yesterday about each sonnet; however, you do not need to write your answers out--just know how you would answer each question in discussion--this gives you more time to devote to your own sonnet writing.
Johnson
Sonnet 61
Francesco Petrarch
Blest be the day, and blest the month and year,
Season and hour and very moment blest,
The lovely land and place where first possessed
By two pure eyes I found me prisoner;
And blest the first sweet pain, the first most dear,
Which burnt my heart when Love came in as guest;
And blest the bow, the shafts which shook my breast,
And even the wounds which Love delivered there.
Blest be the words and voices which filled grove
And glen with echoes of my lady's name;
The sighs, the tears, the fierce despair of love;
And blest the sonnet-sources of my fame;
And blest that thought of thoughts which is her own,
Of her, her only, of herself alone!
"To Helene" by Pierre de Ronsard
translated by Robert Hollander
When you are very old, in evening candlelight,
Moved closer to the coals and carding out your wool
You'll sing my songs and marvel that you were
such a fool:
"O Ronsard did praise me when I was young and bright."
Then you'll have no handmaid to help you pass
the night,
Spinning while your gossip leads her into lull.
Until you say my name and her roused eyes grow
full
In wonder of your glory in what Ronsard did
write.
When I am in the earth, poor ghost without his
bones,
A sleeper in the shade of myrtle trees and stones,
Then you, beside the hearth, old crouched
and gray,
Will yearn for that's lost, repenting your
disdain.
Live it well, I pray you, today won't come again:
Gather up roses before they fall away.
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