Just a few random sonnets I was inspired to write after reading Shakespeare's collection. Tell me what you think, SVP!
SONNET I
Excruciating love, what hast thou done?
That I partake of thee yet thirst for more,
I crave repose, since my first taste begun,
To steep my grateful soul by Lethe's shore.
Inside thy vial, vile care dissolves,
Distilled of impure thoughts and sinful doubt,
Within thy cup my worldly woe resolves,
But floods back on the sluiceway when without.
And thus thy spirit brings besotted joys
Where I am trapped in infinite regress;
Before the daybreak ecstasy destroys,
Embracing thee, my holy lips profess:
An abstinence from love shall never see
The temporal bliss that I have found in thee.
SONNET II
I kneel atop a precipice in life
While grasping two contentious loves of old,
As bitter gusts and breath-bereaving strife
Are slowly tearing at my tired hold.
My love and love of duty make war here
And importune to let the other go;
Condemning one to save one would appear
To rescue me as well from death below.
But now my captive choice loves one alone -
Sheer Gravity of calling usurps will -
Where insurrection wears me to the bone
A hidden bluff would serve me better still.
Now is the time when I must feign to choose:
In clinging to both, both I deign to lose.
APPASSIONATO
Around his boldfaced name she traced a heart –
Pianist virtuoso, world-acclaimed –
Could he recall the years they spent apart,
The days in Venice and the nights unnamed?
She listens to his listless Rhapsody
And calmly starts to leave the concert hall
As he embarks with new intensity
Against his distant yearning shores with all
The broken anguish of a wordless song
Would that she heard and knew! Until the great
Cadenza, crashing chords do but prolong
His thirst. He surges through the door, too late
Again, already she has slipped away.
Appassionato sempre al fine.