101 Poems, Number 35

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

35: Sonnet 111 (“O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide”), 1609, by William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

I memorized this—not too long

Ago.It’s dense. Not like a song

That flows along so sensibly—

Like woodland brooks, so merrily.

It is a plea for pity, see?

“Feel sorry for a writer—me.

My life is really not that grand.”

And then that phrase, “The dyer’s hand”?

Well, that is why these lines I learned:
“My name’s in there! So I’m concerned!”

My ancestors were dyers, see—

They colored things (and not for free).

So now these words are in my head—

I mumble them—sometimes in bed.

And so these words will never leave—

Or so, at least, I must believe.

Link to poem.