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you're not wrong user. shelley is top 5 all time.

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

Chi è questa che vèn, ch’ogn’om la mira,
che fa tremar di chiaritate l’âre
e mena seco Amor, sì che parlare
null’ omo pote, ma ciascun sospira?

5O Deo, che sembra quando li occhi gira,
dical’ Amor, ch’i’ nol savria contare:
cotanto d’umiltà donna mi pare,
ch’ogn’altra ver’ di lei i’ la chiam’ ira.

Non si poria contar la sua piagenza,
10ch’a le’ s’inchin’ ogni gentil vertute,
e la beltate per sua dea la mostra.

Non fu sì alta già la mente nostra
e non si pose ’n noi tanta salute,
che propiamente n’aviàn conoscenza.

---

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles ;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
- Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

---

Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría
despertando al albor de la mañana,
a la tarde serán lástima vana
durmiendo en brazos de la noche fría.

Este matiz que al cielo desafía,
Iris listado de oro, nieve y grana,
será escarmiento de la vida humana:
¡tanto se emprende en término de un día!

A florecer las rosas madrugaron,
y para envejecerse florecieron:
cuna y sepulcro en un botón hallaron.

Tales los hombres sus fortunas vieron:
en un día nacieron y espiraron;
que pasados los siglos horas fueron.

---

O sol é grande: caem co’a calma as aves,
Do tempo em tal sazão, que sói ser fria.
Esta água que de alto cai acordar-me-ia,
Do sono não, mas de cuidados graves.

Ó cousas todas vãs, todas mudaves,
Qual é tal coração que em vós confia?
Passam os tempos, vai dia trás dia,
Incertos muito mais que ao vento as naves.

Eu vira já aqui sombras, vira flores,
Vi tantas águas, vi tanta verdura,
As aves todas cantavam de amores.

Tudo é seco e mudo; e, de mestura,
também mudando-m’eu fiz doutras cores:
e tudo o mais renova, isto é sem cura!

Uilliam Fakefpeare

Mes bouquins refermés sur le nom de Paphos,
Il m’amuse d’élire avec le seul génie
Une ruine, par mille écumes bénie
Sous l’hyacinthe, au loin, de ses jours triomphaux.

Coure le froid avec ses silences de faulx,
Je n’y hululerai pas de vide nénie
Si ce très blanc ébat au ras du sol dénie
A tout site l’honneur du paysage faux.

Ma faim qui d’aucuns fruits ici ne se régale
Trouve en leur docte manque une saveur égale :
Qu’un éclate de chair humain et parfumant !

Le pied sur quelque guivre où notre amour tisonne,
Je pense plus longtemps peut-être éperdûment
A l’autre, au sein brûlé d’une antique amazone.

whats so great? can anyone spoon feed me?

...

We all read it in high school and thought it was cool.

Unironically true.

This is not a sonnet you mongoloid goat fucker

What did he mean by this?

>He also burned with jealousy that Byron was a bestseller and he wasn't.

Also Byron called him "Turdsworth" once

>Also Byron called him "Turdsworth" once
sick burn desu

I have some suggestions of great sonnets:

To Night, by Joseph Blanco White

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

I myself am not religious and doubt that there is life after death – hope I’m wrong – but this is a great sonnet.

Prayer (I)

BY George Herbert

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

I love this sonnet: an unending succession of metaphors, from the usual imagery of the religious poetry (but with some surprises, like an Engine that is set “against” the Almighty) up to the most extreme and visionary (almost psychedelic) comparisons “milky-way” turning into the “bird of Paradise” and to bells that are heard in a realm that lies beyond the stars, then to the blood of the soul and even the “land of spices”. And yet, after achieving the summits of imagination almost to the point of frenzy, the poet ends the poem with the most quiet of notes: “something understood.”

For me this poem somehow relates to meditation instead of prayer (actually, there are some people that describe prayer as a form of meditation; they seem to belong to the same family).

Design
Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Some great analysis of this poem here:

books.google.com.br/books?id=amUdiZLtBJcC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=robert pack design spider robert frost&source=bl&ots=T55Ou8759D&sig=dVKU52BKa232c8hNy3jqzRr4p4Y&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib0oefhLrZAhVKFpAKHahgA6MQ6AEIOjAG#v=onepage&q=robert pack design spider robert frost&f=false

Lucifer in Starlight

BY George Meredith

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.

Donald Justice, the Wall (this sonnet was written in a creative writing class and it surprised the teacher of the then young Donald Justice)

The wall surrounding them they never saw;
The angels, often. Angels were as common
As birds or butterflies, but looked more human.
As long as the wings were furled, they felt no awe.
Beasts, too, were friendly. They could find no flaw
In all of Eden: this was the first omen.
The second was the dream which woke the woman.
She dreamed she saw the lion sharpen his claw.
As for the fruit, it had no taste at all.
They had been warned of what was bound to happen.
They had been told of something called the world.
They had been told and told about the wall.
They saw it now; the gate was standing open.
As they advanced, the giant wings unfurled.

Leda and the Swan
W. B. Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

If We Must Die

BY Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

*

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him good.

*

When man is gone and only gods remain
To stride the world, their mighty bodies hung
With golden shields, and golden curls outflung
Above their childish foreheads; when the plain
Round skull of Man is lifted and again
Abandoned by the ebbing wave, among
The sand and pebbles of the beach, — what tongue
Will tell the marvel of the human brain?
Heavy with music once this windy shell,
Heavy with knowledge of the clustered stars;
The one-time tenant of this draughty hall
Himself, in learned pamphlet, did foretell,
After some aeons of study jarred by wars,
This toothy gourd, this head emptied of all.

Saint Judas, James Wright

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.

The New Colossus
BY Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

(kind of ironic this poem on this day and time)

Easter Sunday, 1985

Charles Martin

To take steps toward the reappearance alive of the disappeared is a subversive act,
and measures will be adopted to deal with it.
—General Oscar Mejia Victores,
President of Guatemala

In the Palace of the President this morning,
The General is gripped by the suspicion
That those who were disappeared will be returning
In a subversive act of resurrection.

Why do you worry? The disappeared can never
Be brought back from wherever they were taken;
The age of miracles is gone forever;
These are not sleeping, nor will they awaken.

And if some tell you Christ once reappeared
Alive, one Easter morning, that he was seen—
Give them the lie, for who today can find him?

He is perhaps with those who were disappeared,
Broken and killed, flung into some ravine
With his arms safely wired up behind him.

Mother Night
James Weldon Johnson,

Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
The haven of the darkness whence they came;
Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way.

So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

thank you for these

Your welcome. I’m doing my master’s degree project about the sonnet tradition in the English language. I’m going to take the best I can find and translate them to Portuguese, making a brief commentary on every single poem. That’s why I have encountered some sonnets that may be considered somewhat obscure by the main readers of poetry on Veeky Forums.

If you really want to thank me you can read some translations of some of my sonnets and give your honest – your terrible and merciless – opinion.

not that user but i dont think many people here know portuguese desu

I translated them to English (in free verse without rhyme, just the literal meaning)

post 'em

go on then, get your sonnets out for the lads ;)

Ok :)

a)
Some faces of love (I based the structure of this one in the Herbert sonnet on Prayer I posted above)

Love: pollen that the rose of the heart creates;
The wheat of friendship forged in carnal bread;
Virus that inflames the soul in honey; the milk of joy;
A tempest in which the thunders have teeth of satin;

A sun that solves icebergs and warms the chest; a narcotic harp;
Human carbon harmonized in diamond;
Drunkenness of ambrosia and cirrhotic corrosion;
Flesh and blood hosting a god as an inhabitant;

Emptiness in the me, in the us infinity; ocean
That submerges in ocean; fruit and thorn;
The coma of reason; desire made tyrant;

The heavens when in the human clay they make their nest;
The oxygen of spirit; the road of roads;
Tender whispers under sheets on the cold nights.

Algumas faces do amor

Amor: pólen que a rosa do coração cria;
O trigo da amizade em pão carnal forjado;
Vírus que inflama a alma em mel; leite da alegria;
Tormenta em que os trovões tem dente acetinado;

Sol que icebergs solve e aquece o peito; harpa narcótica;
Carbono humano harmonizado em diamante;
Embriaguez de ambrosia e corrosão cirrótica;
Carne e sangue hospedando um deus como habitante;

Vazio no eu, no nós infinito; oceano
Em oceano mergulhado; fruto e espinho;
O coma da razão; o desejar tirano;

O céu quando no barro humano faz seu ninho;
O oxigênio do espírito; via das vias;
Ternos sussurros sob lençóis em noites frias.

b)
Apples, grains, peaches, veils of grassland,
Cedars, pines, the feathers of autumn,
Corals of the sea, mountains, sun, light, the heavens ...
All of these are only yawns, soon they will be sleep.

Even the cosmos, flowered with existences,
A nest of worlds, it's also a birth
Generated to end in drowsiness:
The eclipse of chaos marks its bitter abortion.

Even on the face of the newborn
In sad dances the germs of death waltz:
Every human is already born consumed,

Death already inhabits inside the blood children;
To live is to rot under such contagion,
In the sea of nothing being has its shipwreck.

Original:

Maçãs, grãos, pêssegos, gramados véus,
Cedros, pinheiros, as plumas do outono,
Corais do mar, montanhas, sol, luz, céus...
São só bocejos, logo serão sono.

Mesmo o cosmo, florido de existência,
Ninho de mundos, é também um parto
Gerado pra findar em sonolência:
O eclipse do caos marca o amargo aborto.

Mesmo no rosto do recém-nascido
Bailam germes de morte em tristes danças:
Todo humano já nasce consumido,

Já habita a morte o sangue das crianças;
Viver é apodrecer sob tal contágio,
No mar do nada o ser tem seu naufrágio.

c)The Loneliness of Time

(it was supposed to be a sonnet, but I ended up needing space and added 2 more lines)

His loneliness is a sea, the others are only bubbles.
He, who has in his breath a cosmic shroud,
Who blinds eagles and suns, dries souls and leaves,
Castrates mating-heats and volcanoes, silences the wind and the canary,

Gnaws the pans and the pyramids, muzzles the waltz
Of the clock and the galaxy, sour wine and veins,
He, Time, is a tyrant of false wickedness
That, without hate or pleasure, unravel our webs.

He loves creation, from the simple to the complex,
However his biography is a book of extinctions
That will ultimately make the cosmos a mirror without a reflection
Since Death rides upon his pulsations.

But when Death at last devours itself
Alone, surrounded by darkness, Time shall sit down
Without even Death with him to hold his hand:
His is the most sad of all incarnations of solitude.

The original

A Solidão do Tempo

Sua solidão é um mar, as outras são só bolhas.
Ele, que tem no alento um cósmico sudário,
Que cega águias e sóis, resseca almas e folhas,
Castra cios e vulcões, cala vento e canário,

Rói panela e pirâmide, amordaça a valsa
De relógio e galáxia, azeda vinho e veias,
Ele, o Tempo, é um tirano de maldade falsa
Que, sem ódio ou prazer, desmancha nossas teias.

Ele ama a criação, do simples ao complexo,
Porém sua biografia é um livro de extinções
Que enfim fará do cosmo espelho sem reflexo
Já que a Morte cavalga as suas pulsações.

Mas quanto a Morte por fim auto devorar-se
Sozinho, em meio ao breu, o Tempo há de sentar-se
Sem mesmo a morte para segurar-lhe a mão:
É a sua a mais triste encarnação da solidão.

d)
Ayrton Senna

(this was a Brazilian race driver who was obsessed with his art, to the point were he sacrificed everything, even the health of his relationships and all of his time - and in the end his life - in the search for perfection)

Black serpents suffocating his mind
The untamed speedways, hypnotic mermaids
Clamoring for the caresses of the shooting star
Of his car; in his heart the despotic prayers

From the phoenix of conquest that, once hunted,
Disappeared, to be reborn on the horizon, in the distance.
More than lovers, than family and friends, he loved
The craving of going beyond. Like God to the monk

This centaur with metal bowels
Had as his goal the highest peak of the mountain.
There are those who think they are great and open champagne
By climbing hills, he sought the fatal heavens:

He merged to the summit, made himself one with the victory
In an alchemy of steel, asphalt, blood, and glory.

The original

Ayrton Senna

Negras serpentes sufocando sua mente
As pistas não domadas, sereias hipnóticas
Clamando por carícias da estrela cadente
De seu carro; em seu peito as orações despóticas

Da fênix da conquista que, uma vez caçada,
Sumia, renascendo no horizonte, ao longe.
Mais que amantes, senpaiília e amigos, foi amada
Por ele a ânsia de ir além. Qual Deus ao monge

Esse centauro com entranhas de metal
Tinha por meta o pico mais alto da montanha.
Há aqueles que se creem grandes e abrem champanha
Por subir morros, ele quis o céu fatal:

Fundiu-se ao cume, fez-se um só com a vitória
Numa alquimia de aço, asfalto, sangue e glória.

e)

Nights that are violated by old winter
Bleed virginal rains, weep ice,
Awaken polluted by his seal:
The glittering saliva of the frost.

The graybeard trembles in the street, fragile like a spark;
Beggars boil soup in the campfires;
Cats abandon the skies for the fireplaces;
The trees that the wind pinches howl:

Here is the world that the cold outside paints,
But it cruel kingdom cannot hurt us.
Our skins kiss each other, they fruit honey:

Sweat is our ink in this bed.
Love would see, if he were a bird,
In our sheets the straw with which to build his nest.

The original:

Noites por velho inverno violadas
Sangram virginais chuvas, choram gelo,
Despertam poluídas por seu selo:
A brilhante saliva das geadas.

Treme o ancião, frágil qual faísca;
Mendigos fervem sopa nas fogueiras;
Gatos trocam os céus pelas lareiras;
Uivam árvores que o vento belisca:

Eis o mundo que o frio lá fora pinta,
Mas não nos fere seu reino cruel.
Beijam-se nossas peles, frutam mel:

Suor é neste leito a nossa tinta.
Veria amor, se fosse passarinho,
Nos nossos lençóis palha pra seu ninho.

Only good answers:

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

and

When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be
JOHN KEATS

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.-

>Lucifer in Starlight
What exactly is that supposed to be about? That's one of the earliest poems I can remember reading and I've never been able to figure it out.

Lucifer feels - perhaps after several ages of lethargy and depression in the dark voids of the abyss – a surge of mind-enthusiasm and long-forgotten sinewy energy on his flesh, and decides to attack the Creator by punishing the world, “the rolling ball”. He flies over Earth, meditating on what he should do, with every sight “[pricking]his scars/With memory of the old revolt from Awe,”.

However, when he again encounters the stars:

He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.

He again loses his willpower, he simply contemplates the glory of the starts and sinks into depression, he crawls back like a lizard under the rocks where he came from, because he perceives once again that resistance is futile, that the power who seed the universe with countless galaxies simply cannot be defeated:

Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.

The “army of unalterable law”, that he might have forgot in his drowsiness on the pit, now bursts back to live inside his brain when the “brain of heaven” pierces his eyeballs with it’s light. Now Lucifer doesn’t even have the energy to attack the Earth, even more so because humans are mostly an unworthy and uninteresting prey:

Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those

I guess this is the main meaning of the poem.

this one didnt do anything for me, sorry. i liked the imagery of the first two stanzas but everything after the volta felt too cliche.

i like this one but i thought the "open champagne" line was just extremely awkward, could be a translation issue but im not feeling it.

really like thi sone.

>a
"rose of the heart" is super cliched image i would rework that personally.
otherwise really good, i think you make good use of repetition (ocean, roads)

>b
i dont really understand what an "eclipse of chaos" is

overall really good sonnets user, among the best i've seen on Veeky Forums. sorry if the comments are brief and surface there's not much to say.

>i like this one but i thought the "open champagne" line was just extremely awkward, could be a translation issue but im not feeling it.

It is indeed strange. I should have traslated it like this:

There are those who think they are great and open champagne
Only because they climbed hills, he sought the fatal heavens

What I wanted to convey is that in many activities in life there are those who make good jobs and achieve a certain position and then deem themselves worthy of celebrating as real champions. In the F-1 car races, the tree first pilots that won the podium generally finish the celebration by bursting open large bottles of Champaign and celebrating with baths of the effervescent beverage.

I wanted to contrast these semi-achievers with the fanatics, those like Michelangelo, or Beethoven, who are not content to simply walk to the top of a hill near the city and look down on the people in the city, judging they have really succeeded. Those individuals, no matter what they do, keep moving forward, keep climbing and climbing towards the sky, to the cold, inhospitable, harsh and unforgiving summits of the Everest-like mountains of realization.

As with the climber who will face lack of oxygen, cold, frostbite, pulmonary embolism and the possibility of death, the artists, scientists and sportspeople who struggle for never-before-seen excellency might risk losing friends, hurting family members, sacrificing socializing time, sacrificing the attention that healthy children demand, and the risk of evolving mental illness.

So in the case of the pilot of the Sonnet he was not happy with victory here and there, but aspiring the best timing, the best record in history, the best performances of all time: the heavens, and not the top of a hill. He would not deem himself worthy of opening the champagne of triumph if he did not think he was capable of climbing the Everest.

>i dont really understand what an "eclipse of chaos"

That verse is indeed awkward and obscure. I was thinking on the chaos and entropy that would eventually lead to the end of the universe, the ultimate (and eternal) eclipse of all things.

>verall really good sonnets user, among the best i've seen on Veeky Forums. sorry if the comments are brief and surface there's not much to say.

Thank you, you are very kind. I enjoyed your suggestions. I think I will change the line about the "Eclipse of chaos"

poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/shelleys-sonnet-ozymandias/

Sorry I don't speak taco

that's xinxim, not taco

I see, thank you.
I'mma say Ozymandias is better.

Are we just posting sonnets we like?

So take my vows and scatter them to sea;
Who swears the sweetest is no more than human.
And say no kinder words than these of me:
"Ever she longed for peace, but was a woman!
And thus they are, whose silly female dust
Needs little enough to clutter it and bind it,
Who meet a slanted gaze, and ever must
Go build themselves a soul to dwell behind it."

For now I am my own again, my friend!
This scar but points the whiteness of my breast;
This frenzy, like its betters, spins an end,
And now I am my own. And that is best.
Therefore, I am immeasurably grateful
To you, for proving shallow, false, and hateful.

Bump

>McKay
Nice

>Posting the version without the ellipsis

>Easter Sunday, 1985

Thank you for this. Thank you so, so much.

Glad you liked it

You are a very promising poet. Keep going, you might end up achieving something

>Donald Justice, the Wall (this sonnet was written in a creative writing class and it surprised the teacher of the then young Donald Justice)
>The wall surrounding them they never saw;
>The angels, often. Angels were as common
>As birds or butterflies, but looked more human.
>As long as the wings were furled, they felt no awe.
>Beasts, too, were friendly. They could find no flaw
>In all of Eden: this was the first omen.
>The second was the dream which woke the woman.
>She dreamed she saw the lion sharpen his claw.
>As for the fruit, it had no taste at all.
>They had been warned of what was bound to happen.
>They had been told of something called the world.
>They had been told and told about the wall.
>They saw it now; the gate was standing open.
>As they advanced, the giant wings unfurled.

this one is great

cheers user, best of luck.