You may have noticed that I am working my way through Shakespeare’s sonnets… I’m not sharing every one of them, but I have had great delight in discovering poems which are new tome.
This sonnet, number 25, expresses emotions and thoughts which very much tie in with my story ‘Loving Judah’ about those who see to have everything, including fame and fortune, but how these ‘gifts’ can be snatched away. In the case of my character in my novel, it was a moment’s weakness and stupidity which led to lies and untruths and deceit and betrayal… but once he was ‘a golden boy’:
Sonnet XXV
Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
Then happy I, that love and am beloved,
Where I may not remove nor be removed.William Shakespeare
Lois Elsden 
Lois, the late Christopher Hitchens, in his memoir ‘Hitch 22′, assured us that in his personal experience, the ability to dredge up a Shakespeare sonnet from your memory and recite it with feeling at the appropriate time during a seduction process can be a powerful leg opener.
My favourite is No.29, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”, which beautifully pivots around the word “haply” about two-thirds through, and if I had known Hitchens’ titbit of advice when I was younger I might have been tempted to memorise that one and use it to see if he was right.
Alas…
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Awww, I’ll go and remind myself of it… and pay special attention to ‘haply’
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