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Translation Trashbin - 13. O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
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A completion of Shakespeare’s
W.H. Sonnet No.126
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle's hour:
Who hast by waning grown, and therein shows
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grows.
In Nature – sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards – still will pluck thee back;
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May Time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure,
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure;
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be
And her quietus is to render thee.
She may hold thee back, but Love has you go
To let the strong hours of your manhood show.
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For some unknown reason, I was thinking about that this morning and remembering how the original 1609 edition supplies two empty-but-bracketed lines below the poem. This is to emphasis the concluding couplet is missing. But why? As all the evidence points to the poet himself preparing this volume for printing, it's not likely we can say the couplet was "lost." Perhaps, if you follow Booth's reasoning, the title of "Sonnet" for 126 is loose, and refers to the older meaning of sonnetto as general love lyrics. His theory is reasonable, but totally refuted by the nature of the love-lyric-sonnets published in The Passionate Pilgrim. If you compare those songs to 126, it's clear the W.H. poem is a Sonnet in the strictest sense. So my reasoning wondered, could the redacted couplet have been too suggestive, too erotic, too sensual to publish? That is an interesting idea, but more research would have to be done to build an argument for it.
I supplied an ending, one which I think ties up the themes of the poem quite nicely, and returns to the boy vs. man subject of several of the other Sonnets. Thank you for reading
(The slight editing I have done to the poem is to bring it back in line with the original 1609 version for spelling and punctuation. For example, the source material has "power" but later, prissier editors changed it to a ludicrous "pow'r," for reasons unknown...)
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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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