� 2001-2006 by Shiloh
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A couple days ago when I found the poem I used in my second entry on hope I subscribed to a newsletter that sends you a sonnet every other day. Today I got my first sonnet.
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before the bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head;
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another's green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
~Sonnet LXVIII, William Shakespeare~
*dry smile* This is a perfect example of one occasion when Shakespeare's writing hasn't been so easy for me to understand. I had to read it three or four times before I even thought I understood what he was trying to say. I got the mental picture of an old man loud and clear all right, with a face browned from years in the sun and lined with wrinkles, fine lines like those on a map. (Note today's cultural context.) I thought the Master was speaking about days gone by, those of youth and fresh beauty, or in the case of this man, handsomeness.
But then I thought, I could be way off-base here. Shakespeare was an Elizabethan man and so there's an historical context to take into account as well. So, if you know me and my innate curiosity, I went looking for footnotes to help me understand the sonnet better. I was half right; the Bard was talking about the days of youth gone by, but I missed the deeper connotation. Apparently he disdained the use of cosmetics and other methods of retaining youth. He used this and another sonnet to launch barbs at the older popinjays who tried valiantly and vainly to perpetuate the illusion of their greenness. He hated face paint, wigs and the like. He was obviously one who thought growing older should be accepted with grace and dignity.
He woulda liked me. I'm as natural as they come--though if I start losing my hair I'm sorry, but out comes a wig. I won't be a bald lady. *winks*
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