8.11.2026 – sweet love remembered

sweet love remembered
such wealth brings that I scorn to
change my state with kings

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him,
like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art
and that man’s scope

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet … in these thoughts myself almost despising …

Haply … I think on thee,

and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth)

sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare (1609).

I know that a sonnet is having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a rhymed couplet and the recitation of such should follow the rhythm of the scan but when I am already editing Mr. Shakespeare down to a haiku, how much more of an offense can it be to try and add parsing in my own fashion (which I stole for a YouTube recitation of the Sonnet 29 by Judi Dench (which I will leave to you to look up on your own)).

BUT I Digress as the point of this is to say in words better than I can write, Happy Anniversary, to my wife!

1989 to 2026, for some better and lots worse, and still together … after all these years!

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings …
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.