My sonnet

My love lies soft upon my breast and waits
for morning light to wrest his sleep from eyes
weary, heavy, with labor that creates
distance from him to me and makes me cry.
Not long until the sun will break embrace
so sweet night-long when darkness hides our fate
I cannot see but feel his lovely face
our bodies sense our loyal hearts vibrate.
Oh sun, do slow your course this day and leave
my love and I to take subsistence from
smooth skin, strong arms, and willing lips to cleave
to one another while you wait to come.
Yet even when your rays do break sweet time
You cannot lie and say my love’s not mine.

8 thoughts on “My sonnet”

  6. That’s really good.

    I don’t know much about sonnets so I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be in iambic pentameter. If they are (or maybe that’s what you were going for without having had to), you might want to try switching up line three. Weary and heavy both have emphases on their first syllables (I usually say WEA-ry, HEA-vy, as opposed to wea-RY, hea-VY, which is how you’d have to say that line if you kept it iambic). But you could say with weary, heavy labor that creates and that would fix it. Of course, it could just be that your accent says those words differently than I do.

  7. I’m glad you mentioned that.

    The sonnet is written in iambic pantameter, as most Shakespearian (also known as English) sonnets are. However, many great poets (and some that are just practicing) vary the meter at key points. Line three is different intentionally; the variance makes ‘weary’ and ‘heavy’ drag the line down and go slower, which is meaningful for the that line. Also, if I added ‘with’ to the beginning of the line, it would throw the syllabic count off.

    Thanks for the feedback and the opportunity to brag. 🙂

  8. Oh, I meant adding “with” at the beginning and taking the other “with” in the line out (which adds it up very nicely to ten – with weary, heavy, labor that creates). The meaning would change somewhat then though – it would be describing the labor as heavy and weary instead of describing something else (can’t remember your object without going to the page) as heavy and weary with labor that creates distance.

    That definitely does do what you wanted – the poem takes on a sleepy quality there.

    If I were you unless I expressly included a note to that effect to my prof, (or unless the prof had expressly mentioned that and sort of expected you to work that kind of thing in) I probably would change it up if I ever handed it in. But that’s just becuase when I was in school I remember sometimes having ingenius intentions misunderstood – for instance in a labor economics class I once re-wrote the backward bending supply curve of labor to include a gently sloping demand curve as well. I was trying to show that unlike the supply curve, the labor demand curve is not backward bending, but the prof did not take it well.

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