“Sonnet 35: No more be griev’d at that which thou hast done” by William Shakespeare

No more be griev’d at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

This is another of the Fair Youth sonnets. In this poem, the speaker is addressing a wrong which the young man committed against him. The sense that I get is that the speaker believes that the youth was not faithful, specifically from line 9 where he mentions “thy sensual fault.”

The most moving part of this poem, though, occurs in lines 11 and 12:

And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,

Here the speaker is expressing his inner conflict, which is such a human response to the pain of infidelity. On one hand, he is wracked with pain and anger, but on the other hand, his love and attachment is already prompting him to forgive. And it is this contrast, this inner struggle, which is the most powerful aspect of this poem.

Haunted Horror: #20

I’ve read several of these collections, and I always enjoy them. Basically, they are collections of old horror tales reprinted on the same type of non-gloss pulp paper used in the original publications. All the comics in this collection (there are six yarns in this issue) were all originally published in the 1950’s. Below the title page of each story, the original publication information is displayed.

What I find so interesting about these old comics are the moral issues that they address. Each of them has some issue woven in, and it seems that these were the types of issues that society was facing at the time: infidelity, greed, envy, loneliness, prejudice, etc. And while society is still grappling with these issues today, in the 50’s, society did its best to whitewash over them. But just as the decayed wood eventually starts to show through the white painted picket fence, so these issues began to show themselves in society. So graphic horror became a vehicle for society to safely examine these issues.

Just a quick mention about the writing and the artwork. They are both very much in the 50’s style. The colors and style of many of the drawings reminded me of the old Dick Tracy comics. And the language! I found myself chuckling internally at phrases like “’Good Grief” and “Great Scott.” But that is part of the nostalgia.

Hope you are enjoying the Halloween season! Cheers.