When in Disgrace... Sonnet 29

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,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,

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 remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29. Whenever you might get a little blase’ about the power and magic inherent in our greatest legacy (that of language itself), I urge you to read a few words written by masters who, using nothing more than language, have created their own indisputable immortality.

This action is also a great ego-reducer, when you begin to think a bit too much of your own use of language, writing quotidian things like Quora answers, and web log entries. PS— sometimes people complain that Shakespeare is full of cliche’s… e.g “curse my fate”, “heaven’s gate”, “the lark at break of day arising”, in just this one sonnet. To which a person can retort that these sayings were not cliche’s when Shakespeare wrote them: His expressiveness has entered the language to such an extent that many of our cliche`s are from his original expressions…