Disclaimer: I own nothing from Shakespeare. Damn!
(Now revised! Thanks Aercalima & prone2dementia for pointing things out!)
Invocation.
1.
Scorn not the sonnet, even when it's old;
Scorn not its rhyme, even when it's brittle;
Scorn not its meaning, even when it's cold;
And scorn not its worth, ev'n when there's little.
And don't fear the sonnet, ev'n when it's hard;
Do not fear its rhyme, even when it slows;
Don't fear its meaning, ev'n when it's froward;
And don't fear it's worth, even when it blows.
One should not have scorn or fear for such things,
Whose rhyme makes lovely music out of words,
Whose meaning tells much insight as it sings,
Whose worth's not found in its collective words,
But is found deep within your very soul,
Where every muse out there has its control.
2.
The sonnet is such a beautiful thing,
Though the pains to achieve it are a-plenty,
Where you focus on all those words that bring
It rhyme and meter and force of brevity.
Thus, the sonnet is a difficult form,
A form that has subdued so many bards,
A form that hazes you with every thorn
Of brain-bashing descriptions and regards.
But a sonnet is never a sonnet
Without that brooding struggle from word-one,
As much as a poet's not a poet
Without that iron will to overcome:
For sonnets are ardent labors of love
That all great poets to themselves must prove.
3.
Sonnet-writing's a lonesome endeavor,
Just you and your mind, just you and your rhymes,
Just you on the chair and the pen in your
Hand, as you think up invisible lines.
And writing a sonnet takes so much time,
That you more than posses a saint's composure
To wait for words that come one at a time,
Waiting to the edge of doom's promised pleasure.
But true bards in this long lonely journey
Of thought, who shun all outside worldly things,
Have found a new world of self-mastery,
Where you become that which everything brings.
Thus, true poets become their own creators,
A little of God in us that empowers.
4.
Though sonnets are daunting tasks for would-be
Poets (like you or me) who grasp in vain
For all those thoughts that evade and scurry,
Causing every kind of torment and pain –
Though all this will happen, keep this in mind:
That those who excelled in this mastery,
Those brilliant poets of their age and kind
(Dante and Petrarch, Wyatt and Surrey,
Chapman and Milton, Donne, Shelley and Keats,
Wordsworth and Millay, Sidney and Spencer,
Frost, Brooke and Owen, Rossetti and Yeats), *
They were once bad before they got better,
Composing failures to better their skill,
Braving their torments by sheer force of will.
[* Dante...Yeats = a few famous sonneteers. See mentioned sonneteers on Wikepedia.]
5.
Indeed, we poets stand on the shoulders
Of the poets that wrote before our time;
But those same poets stand on the shoulders
Of the poet's poet, both yours and mine:
The one who penned the madness of Hamlet
And Macbeth, who planned out the self-murder
Of young Romeo and his Juliet
And of Cleopatra and her lover,
And who wrote those Sonnets that we hold dear,
That genius from Stratford-upon-Avon,
The one and the only William Shakespeare –
Forget the muses from Mount Helicon! *
To that bard I dedicate these humble lines,
That I may continue his work through my rhymes.
[* Mount Helicon = a mountain sacred to the Muses. See Mount Helicon on Wikipedia.]
A/N: There you have it; let me know what you think in your review(s). And be as HONEST as you can, 'cause I've worked my ass off writing these. Please...pretty please! Pretty-freaking-please review; I'm getting desperate here. I promise it'll get better, just please let me know what you think, even if you flame this and me to Hell!