In high school, one of my English teachers required each person to select and memorize one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. This one, sonnet 29, is the one I selected. I think we all have times when we feel alone, down on our luck, and wishing we had qualities and talents we admire in others. (Why is it that we tend to compare our weaknesses with others’ strengths?) For me, my husband and children are the ones whose love keep me going.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXIX
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then, I scorn to change my state with kings.
I love LXXXVII its one of my favorites:))