Shakespeare's Birthday

It's the 443rd birthday (and also deathday) of a remarkable mind.

Also the day Miguel de Cervantes died. Those were years when giants walked the earth.

Here is Sonnet 98, a springtime poem with the chill whiff of mortality from which Shakespeare seldom strayed far. I particularly like the odd use of a colon at the end of this poem; a wonderfully open-ended ending, as if he would go on. I could not find a different version, so I guess this is the punctuation he intended.

SONNET 98

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play:

Grass
by Kim Su-yŏng

The grass is lying flat.
Fluttering in the east wind that brings rain in its train,
the grass lay flat
and at last it wept.
As the day grew cloudier, it wept even more
and lay flat again.

The grass is lying flat.
It lies flat more quickly than the wind.
It weeps more quickly than the wind.
It rises more quickly than the wind.

The day is cloudy, the grass is lying flat.
It lies low as the ankles
low as the feet.
Though it lies flat later than the wind,
it rises more quickly than the wind
and though it weeps later than the wind,
it laughs more quickly than the wind.
The day is cloudy, the grass's roots are lying flat.


[Translated and copyrighted by Brother Anthony of Taize]