…Shakespeare’s Sonnet 33, that is. I woke this morning, looked out on my favorite vista across the fields, and, all unbidden, thought, “Full many a glorious morning have I seen”.
What I was thinking was, how lucky I am to still be alive , to still be here, and to have been here so long, on my beloved property.
I have many of Shakespeare’s sonnets memorized, but not this one, #33. So I looked it up.
“Full many a glorious morning have I seen/Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye/Kissing with golden face the meadows green/Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:/ Anon permit the basest clouds to ride/With ugly rack on his celestial face/And from the forlorn world his visage hide, / Stealing to West unseen with this disgrace./E’en so my sun one early morn did shine/With all-triumphant splendor on my brow;/But out, alack, he was but one hour mine;/The region cloud hath masked him from me now./Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth:/Suns of the world my stain when Heaven’s sun staineth.”
Welp— not exactly why I was expecting, I thought it might be a paen to nature, to long life. But WS doesn’t do those themes, I shoulda known. So…some think WS ws bi and this is about a tiff with his young lover. Or, with his patron, whom he wants to flatter. The most moving possibility: about his son/sun Hamnet, dead at only 11.
Whatever way you slice it, he’s saying: hey look, the sun, upon which we depend for our very existence, is inconstant! So how can we expect any greater constancy from our earthly “suns”, the people we love? Surely if the sun itself can be moody and fickle, we hafta expect it and forgive it in them!
Yet will I revel in the gilded mornings.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
That was a pretty neat post.
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I hear someone say that sons, daughters, and mothers all can receive unconditional love. Their patriarch, on the other hand, does not.
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“There is no god but Mommy, and Daddy is her prophet.”
What you are saying is basically true, but it’s over to mothers to recognize the god like role they play in their children’s lives, and spread the love around, so to speak, so that it includes others, not just themselves.
Basically, a wise mother will recognize that her small children view her as a god, and discourage that view, mostly by supporting and building up their father, talking about how great he is, etc…An insecure woman will want all the love and attention for herself, and will undermine the kids’ father, because she doesn’t want to share the love with anyone.
There are so many insecure women around these days, and they are wreaking so much havoc and misery. But, yeah. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. For better or worse.
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But that isn’t what the Bard is saying. His “sun” is clearly a man, and he the poet is more than willing to forgive him his caprices…..
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Because of unconditional love both expected and given to his son.
Turn the tables and see how quickly the son turns his back on the patriarch.
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But it may not be Hamnet, it may be Shakespeare’s young lover or aristocratic patron.
I still don’t think WS was gay. But he’d a encountered lotsa beautiful boys wanting the female parts on his plays. In this sonnet, #20, say I, he’s regretting that he CAN’T engage in homosexual love:
“A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion:
A woman’s gentle heart, though not acquainted
with shifting change, as is false woman’s fashion!
An eye as bright as theirs, less false in rolling,
gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling
that steals men’s eyes, and women’s eyes amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created
Till Nature, as she made thee, fell a-doting
And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing—to my purpose, nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.”
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The world needs more families with 3 or more boys without sisters.
Ask me how I know.
I miss the middle children in American life.
Only children can’t be the black sheep of the family. A one child family is at least 1 child shy of having enough children to produce the black sheep phenomenon.
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You would love my extended family, Simon. Virtually all of them are three boys, no girls, except for one that is three girls, no boys. We call it “My three sons.” 🙂
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“Like a bridegroom, coming forth from his tent….,” says the Psalmist, of the sun. Your lovely post brought this description to mind, dear Hypatia. Thank you!
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Sodomites are a whole ‘nother story. Horses of a different color so to speak.
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