The
Sonnet Sessions continue....
Please get in touch any time:
podcastshakespeare@gmail.com.
William
Shakespeare, Sonnet XIII
O! that you
were your self; but, love, you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you
know,
You had a father: let your son say
so.
Music:
Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Fantasia
on Greensleeves“,
from Sir
John
in Love, opera
adapted from William Shakespeare’s The
Merry
Wives
of Windsor,
1928
Opening to Act III of Sir John in Love, New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Meredith
Davies.