The Amusing Implications of a Sonnet

SONNET 33:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye*,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack* on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace*:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

Translation 2938:


When my Dear One wakes, His bright lashes beam like rays of sunrise, except they turn to the heavens and not to the ground, just as Love should tend. My dawn hides in the stretching of arms which would as quickly stretch to defend the honor of their master. My dawn cracks in the bewildered face, still lost between the dream and the reality, just as it might have appeared to God when it first set eyes upon the world of man. My Dear One wakes, and the new day breaks in golden chords of tousled hair.


The towering and tumbling heaps of pillows cushioning His frame derive their merit not through the comfort they proffer man, but through the service they render to this Man. While I, the lowly pilgrim, gaze, those vassals may at least gain rank by virtue of their yielding. In the same way, He nourishes the leaf-green blanket with every speck of sunny flesh with which He graces it. I envy the cream-white bed sheet’s rivulets through which His precious fingers trace. Those digits leave a shimmering trail, because the places His fingers bless will glitter after all material gold has turned to smoke.

Sometimes some monstrous breed of woman obscures the view I steal from His tiny bedroom window. She blights the sunrise by compelling me to chart its course through the sick and whorish movements of her unhallowed hands and rotting eyes. These naked hags are all so wretched that their skins may never bear the enchantment of His touch, though they bear His touch. At this I shudder, and I wonder; how can Love so mar His dignity? Why does He let stinking corruption touch its boundaries to those of purity? Many mornings I have seen them drape their sickly lumpish breasts upon His perfect face and marveled that lightning did not bolt from such a travesty! Then, when He would make His stately motion out the narrow limits of my vision, that witch, like some putrid fog, would blind my teary eyes from His!

I remember a time when I came to His window, expecting His beauty to restore my battered soul. The horrors and cold cruelty of the world had exhausted my poor heart, of late, and I felt that but to see Him would return my faith in goodness. So it did return my faith, for as I watched Him stretch and yawn, my happiness did imitate His motions, as if relieved after a stifling coma. My Love! When you rub those sleepy eyes, you wipe away the filth with which the world has stained my own! My Love! I tremble to wonder if some air that has resided in your holy lungs has found its way inside my own! In full joyous terror at these thoughts, I, in overflowing awe, watched my blazing, awful Love. Then, a horrific demon scudded into the heavenly frame, setting my outraged heart to palpitations. The hideous gorgon! I dread the fishlike stare of this Medusa, because I fear her stare would cast a fate worse than being cast in stone. She may block His presence from my vision, but ‘tis better she do that than alert His vision of my presence and ruin me. Once again the thoughts are tossed on waves of stormy seas inside my head. Why does He allow this ignoble bag of skin to touch Him? By what right do you receive this sacrament, vile wretch?

But I am sure the arms that surround your unworthy body could defeat all evil in the world. If you may curse Him, then Justice may be blackened by the bias of the court. If you may curse Him, then Nobility may be darkened by the knight who lies and cheats. If you may curse Him, then Goodness is subjected to the sore abuse of evil deeds. The witch curses the frame through which I view Him, but He is never cursed.