I am enjoying my exploration of Shakespeare’s sonnets… here is another one which somehow passed me by when I was studying Shakespeare earlier in life. it surprises me that so few of his sonnets are really well known, that the same ones appear time and again in anthologies or on reading lists, or syllabi. this sonnet, number 113 describes what most of us have felt when we fall in love, that everywhere we look we see the image of our beloved.
In my novel ‘Loving Judah’ Aislin experiences the same thing “All the time he was with her; she couldn’t escape thoughts of him, images of him projected on the walls of the classrooms, memories of things he’d said, things he’d done.” Pedantic words compared to Shakespeare, but it’s the idea!
Sonnet CXIII
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus maketh mine eye untrue.William Shakespeare
Lois Elsden 