Yesterday read Petrarca till late at night...our literature teacher(Professor Treloney from Harry Potter)told us we could describe Laura and Petrarca if we just read like 12 sonnets but not at all!So had to read everything...what I can say:quite nice,though a bit too much like Dante!Nearly direct quotes!I wander who lived earlier...but probably they lived like at the same time.
Now gotta read William's sonnets.I don't understand why he seemed so concerned about children and youth?I mean I know why...children are the future and blah blah and youth and beauty usually go together,but still he was a bit paranoid.Don't think I have smth against old William,he's great...just a little bit too worried about staying young.Life's short,time's precios.
Here 2 sonnets I liked more or less.The the first one sounds trivial and the second one is hard to understand,but they're all in all pretty nice:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
....I'm done for today.