SONNET 13 FATHER: O! that you were your self; but, love, you are

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.


Mnemonic Image

FATHER

Memory Passage

Death places his SEAL upon TIME, assuming the role of the FATHER of Time, showing meaning in the ASTRONOMY of the stars, the figures of which move upon the STAGE in a poor COUNTERFEIT of reality. Death places it all into a TOMB for the duration of the zero SUMMER until is reborn like the PHOENIX with a new FACE.

Idiosyncratic Abstract:



Couplet Imagery

O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
   You had a father: let your son say so.

The vocative O at the beginning and provocative O at the end. The sound of the sucker-punch to the gut. O. The poet invoking heaven by the O. The woman and her sweet O.

O*vaginal orifice. In R&J, the nurse puns on expressions of misery: 'For Juliet's sake . . . rise and stand. Why should you fall into so deep an O?' (cf. rise, stand). Another instance has been detected in the play: see medlar; Dekker evidently registered at least one, since his Satiromastix I.i.17 borrows the joke along with much else from R&J (Intro, p.3). In MVlWIV.i.45, 'the focative case' evokes the vagina (case for fucking), and grammatical puns continue when William describes its invocational use: 'O - vocativo, O - Nowadays commentators find many more instances than are admitted here. But representation of the Globe Theatre as a 'wooden O' (H5 Prol.13) both affirms Shakespeare's ease with 'O' symbolism and cautions about vaginal overloading - though the zealot might urge the sexual transactions of the stage: 'New plays and maidenheads are near akin' (TNK Prol.l). See boar, pen. 2. representing orgasmic gasps and sighs. See die, groan 3.

- Shakespeare's Sexual Language, Gordon Williams

Note that unthrift was more damning in the 14th century. Could those undertones still be resonate in the 16th?

unthrifty (adj.)
late 14c., "unprofitable, useless," from un- (1) "not" + thrifty (adj.), or else from Middle English noun unthrift "profligacy," late 14c., earlier "evil practice, wicked act" (c. 1300). 

- https://www.etymonline.com/word/unthrifty

O!... Son say so!

Q1

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:

O you once were the true blue, the one original Rose, but love, sweet love, you are no longer in possession of that what you once were. Any more than that beauty lives in this language. You are fading even as this sonnet unfolds. By the couplet, you will be dead. Give the semblance. Worship the semblance! All hail the Semblance. If you keep it solely in your possession any longer, you will wither and rot just along with your dying self.

Look at the psych on the first line enjambment:

O that you were yourself...  but, love.... you ARE!

You are yourself, my love, what was I saying, you will live forever and there's no need to pass your beauty on...

But then, the second line: NO! No longer yours. You are no loger the self you once were. O No!



Q2

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.

O So O So Son Say So O. So Should the Mighty Semblance which you are only leasing, not owning, for who can truly hold the Semblance, the One Original Rose, the Platonic Form emanating? But O so if you do not find a place in which to give it, then you beceome your self and that semblance dies with you.

Q3

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?

Whoooo? Ooo ooo? A quatrain as a question. Who ruins the house? Who allows it to fall into decay? What's wrong with your penis? Why do not keep it up? What sort of person would not keep up with the upkeep, not practice good hygienic husbandry? You know: keep the carpet swept and the chimney clear, flush the pipes and oil all the locks and hinges of your house body, of your Semblance? Moisturize your dry bones unit you belive the have skin again.

You should make sure all is ship shape for the stormy gusts and if you think they are bad, wait until you feel the barren rage, the childless rage, of death's eternal cold.

C

O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
   You had a father: let your son say so.

Oooooooo OOOooooooo OOoooo ! It is you! You are the one who is going to suffer the stormy gusts, the barren rage and the eternal cold. And you know, you should know, becaue your father prepared himself by reproducing in you. Time to pass the rotting carcass of the buck before it starts to stink up the place. You had a Dad, now let your issue say the same for you. 

You, Terrible One, why did you rude so upon me? 

SONNET 12 TIME - When I do count the clock that tells the time,

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
     And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Mnemonic Image

TIME

Memory Passage

Death places his SEAL upon TIME, assuming the role of the FATHER of Time, showing meaning in the ASTRONOMY of the stars, the figures of which move upon the STAGE in a poor COUNTERFEIT of reality. Death places it all into a TOMB for the duration of the zero SUMMER until is reborn like the PHOENIX with a new FACE.

Idiosyncratic Abstract:

Couplet Imagery

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

I hear the Heideggerian Nothing in that nothing. What is Time's scythe? The inexorable sweeping hand of the clock mowing through the verses? What is the time inside the sonnet? For within the interior architecture of the poem, there is sanctuary - this played out in later sonnets. But for us, now, the memorization of the sonnet, the re-creation within our memory and the ability to "call it back," the double, the twin, the mirror, the representation.

Breed connotes the animal husbandry of a farmer and a sub-category of gay pornography.

Note the intimations of the afterlife in the "hence." And that it might be a hellish place, where there is need to be brave, or at least endure. 

Q1

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;

Tick tock goes the meter of that first line. Father Time stepping down the echoing hallways of memory. Brave day anticipates that later bravery of the long day's journey into night. Goya's drowning dog is emblematic of the brave day sunk into hideous night. The shriek of hideous damnation, hideous annihilation, the hideous features of the Abyss, of the monster. Counting moves on to beholding. And the sexual petals of the violet past prime. Tennessee Williams's in the whorehouse:

When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin' orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

And there is almost a time-lapse with the dark lady of sabled curls silvering white. That confusion of color with silver as a verb to whiten. The bloody bones silvered in the sun until they were pale with whiteness.

Q2

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,

The hero, the good man, the leader as the lofty tree. Moses with flowing locks, who once sheltered the herd, the good shepherd, turned the balding skeltal ghost of his former self. No longer able to even provide shade to disturb Diogenes. The herd now exposed to the hyenas of time.

Lusty green shoots and shafts of summer are girded up. Girding up the loins. Time's chastity. And carried around in-valid upon the stretcher. The summer soldier legless, armless. Moses with the white and bristly beard - morphing into Father Time himself.

Q3

Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;

After having counted and beholded and seen all of the deprecatory effects of time, then I wonder. It makes me wonder. Not you! Your beauty may not fade nor wander down into the bad part of town, into the wastes of time. Thoreau: you cannot waste time without injuring eternity. But where is the Platonic Form? Here is the face to face I desire. Not the emanation. Not that which will be wasted by time, but the eternal, never fading.

Everything sweet turns bitter. Beauty must fade. Note the reification. The desire to fix beauty into permanence. There is the waterfall, not the water falling. Denial of process. Denial. Would Basho even understand the underlying desire of the sonnets?

C

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

And that Heideggerian Nothing is stronger here at the end than ever. Nothing CAN make defense.


"Nothing Exists" - the original ontological MacGuffin.

SONNET 11 SEAL: As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
   She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.


Mnemonic Image

SEAL

Memory Passage

Death places his SEAL upon TIME, assuming the role of the FATHER of Time, showing meaning in the ASTRONOMY of the stars, the figures of which move upon the STAGE in a poor COUNTERFEIT of reality. Death places it all into a TOMB for the duration of the zero SUMMER until is reborn like the PHOENIX with a new FACE.

Idiosyncratic Abstract:



Couplet Imagery

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.


Q1

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.

The image of the Paglian male withdrawing empty, spent, lifeless from the Chthonian womb of the Great Mother. The man is granted entrance into the Sanctum Sanctorum for his primal face-to-face with the monstrous God. He is overwhelmed and taken by grace into a state of ecstasy - out of body, out of flesh. The consciousness of the sonnet is at the one interval beyond the zenith, that roller coaster click and clack of climbing up and up preceding the Fall, there is a moment of weightless being, perhaps unbearable, but not of any inhuman duration. From ecstatic height of the spirit, the constant ringing bell tone of the orgasm,  the time out of time, out of mind, we come back into the flesh. Post-coitum sorrows. You shall come back into yourself after you have spent your seed inside the temple of the Goddess, but that great red ribbon, that double helix of your self continues to rise and grow within god's mind. And it is only when you see that fresh blood, that red ribbon that unspooled from the pearly white cloud of your cumming, when you see as it emerges out of the temple of god's mystery screaming and laughing with your face, your sweet semblance. It is only then that you may call it yours. It is your child. Grown, as Shakespeare would have it, in the divine ground of the woman's womb, signaling your conversion from youth to adulthood, from boy to man.

Q2

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.

The Platonic Triad of Beauty, Truth and Goodness here rendered as Beauty, Wisdom and Increase. Countered by Age, Folly and Decay. To not reproduce, to not create, to not live according to the transcendental emanations of beauty and wisdom and increase (creation), is to forfeit your humanity, your sacred duty and to descend into the world of shadows and fire, where all is subject to the ugliness of age, the ignorance of folly and the forces of rapid decay. This is the new categorical imperative, to not be so minded to to rebel against history, to hate the world, to seek the annihilation of all being, to make the world away.

Q3

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

Let those cave dwellers, those Morlocks, who live in the Dantean underworld and know only age and folly and decay, let them perish without reproduction. Another triad to ornament the monstrous faes in hell: harsh, featureless and rude. Not worthy of reproduction.

Look in the mirror. Look in your pants. The resonate meanings of endowed. Look to your own mind. You have been given more. You are an abundance. An overflowing container for beauty and truth and goodness. And you should never take for granted the bounteous, over abundant, super human gifts you were given.

C

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.


The Goddess (Nature - See T. Hughes) carved out out of the semen and egg that formed within a woman's womb as her seal, as her divine form in the flesh. The Word made Flesh. The Word Carved into the figure and face of a man. And she did this for you to reproduce your self, physically, intellectually and spiritually. You are the source of the copy. You are the original. It is your duty to fertilize your life and spread your seed, make more, infect the dark and hollow world with beauty, truth and goodness to counter the grey harsh, featureless, rude viral tide of folly, age and cold decay.




- Death of son, Hamnet, on 11 August 1596

SONNET 62 TANNED ANTIQUITY: Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed
Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
   'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.


Mnemonic Image

TANNED ANTIQUITY

Memory Passage

WAVES on the Ocean of Time crash upon the pebbled shore where stands the WATCHMAN whose face is a model of TANNED ANTIQUITY

Idiosyncratic Abstract:

Couplet Imagery

'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

painting / cosmetic / cf. S68 & S69, S101


Q1

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.

Q2

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.

Q3

But when my glass shows me myself indeed
Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.

C

'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

SONNET 61 WATCHMAN: To play the watchman ever for thy sake

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
   For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
   From me far off, with others all too near.


Mnemonic Image

WATCHMAN

Memory Passage

WAVES on the Ocean of Time crash upon the pebbled shore where stands the WATCHMAN

Idiosyncratic Abstract:

Couplet Imagery

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
   From me far off, with others all too near

Watching theme
resonance of wake from sleep / funeral wake / wake as party


Q1

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Neoplatonic theme
 cf S27, S53
heavy v weary
image v shadows
the inner sight mocked by imitative shadows

Q2

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

self-paranoia

Q3

O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:

tonal drop from much to great
mine eye / mine own

the watchman
guarding the towers
watchman what of the night?

C

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
   From me far off, with others all too near.

Sonnet 60 WAVES: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
   And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
   Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Mnemonic Image

WAVES

Memory Passage

WAVES on the Ocean of Time

Idiosyncratic Abstract

The waves containing the ashes of my dead parents

Couplet Imagery

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
   Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Standing vs Cruel Hand

Q1

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

60 as the number of minutes in the hour

favorite line: In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Q2

Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.


progression: nativity to maturity to crooked eclipses to confound
gave / gift

Q3

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

lovely delves the parallels
beauty's brow cf S19

Time as the cruel lepidopterist || feeds on rarities - the hunger of time ||
 nothing STANDS || scythe mow

C

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
   Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

cf. S12 - heavy meter in L11 like time's hand ticking

Time and Hope || verse shall STAND || Time's cruel hand