Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
One Hundred and Fifty-Five Sonnets - 20. Venus from the waters
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Sonnet No. 39
On an island jagged by crystal blue waves,
A boy's body drips coming from the sea,
His tones falling like drops on musical staves,
Saying no more perfection can ever be.
Your smile is like the cant of a sunbeam
To sidelong strike and dazzle where I stand,
But warmer than any starlight can seem
Is the way it lights my body, face and hand.
Venus was born from these waters way back,
And rose from the glinting sea a diamond,
But striding before me, there's nothing you lack,
For the facets of you won't be outdone.
You are my jewel within the sunshine's glow,
Murmuring light to colors deep below.
Sonnet No. 40[1]
Alone and pensive over the lonely countryside,
I measure my paces both late, and dragged rigidly,
and to my eyes holding out, set to bolt, intently
at the sight stamped in the gravel of a human stride.
No other weapon but fight-or-flight is fortified
in the view of my fellow men, who evidently
ascribe joylessness to my actions generally,
and have no idea how I blaze on the inside.
But from now on, I vow these mountains and hills will dote,
these waterways and woods will know in me they strengthen,
and indeed, will see what hidden from others shall brim.
For no matter the harshness of the path, or remote,
wanderer no more, that Love won't leave my side again,
motivating, reasoning with me, and I with him.
[1] Translation of Sono e pensoso, Sonetto 35 dal Rerum vulgarium fragmenta di Francesco Petrarca. Published in November of 1337.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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