July 19, 2012

            So we had a sonnet contest today, but we only had a night to write it, with the ending words of each line already done for us. Here is what I came up with. Remember, I only had a couple of hours to do this.

                        Sonnet 1

Young days doth seem to make time’s nature fat,

Freshly full of dash as the stored pickle,
Eyes ablaze, nimble in step, like the cat
Young days hide the crook’d mask of death’s sickle.
Time’s hard trickle could never affect I,
His ardor belongs to some other sot.
Yet, slowly, the minutes’ march mentions my
Name, sly whispers of welcome on my cot.
Questions are asked of where I am going,
While errors howl, screech, and scream on time’s truck,
And love, love, listens, patiently blowing
Kisses of faith, touchéd trinkets of luck–
Seconds to muster aloud to time, “Why
Not take thy carriage to some other guy?”

That “pickle” line was really hard. Thanks Gina or Wyckham for contributing that word. Stephen made an interesting point. He said to look at the Moor/more (original Renaissance pronounciation “moor”) homonym in Othello. “More” appears 61 times, while “Moor” appears 45 times. What does that mean? You have to decide that one.  

            Did more research today. Here’s the books I worked with.

Thomas Collins, The Penitent Pvblican, published in 1610.

John Freeman, The Comforter: or A comfortable Treatiʃe,
published in 1600.

Anonymous, Three Sermons, Or Homelies, To Mooue Compaʃsion towards the Poore and needie in theʃe times, published in 1596.

I had a great conversation with Caleen and Rob B on the bus ride home today. She said that human beings don’t wake up in the morning with the intent to “do evil.” For example, Iago doesn’t wake up in the morning and the first thought in his head is to destroy, destroy, destroy. He does what he does because that is just his nature; in other words, he uses his mind to his best advantage. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Iago’s first thoughts out of bed are to annihilate everything in his sight. But I also remember a famous quote which Edmund Burke supposedly said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing.” Where are the good men in Othello?