Shakespearean Sonnet #2
Also written when I was 16
“Dirty Willy” would have recognized this as raunchy. It’s not very subtle. You will too.
It’s also a mite chauvinistic. But that is accurate to the Elizabethans.
(I should say, to the first Elizabethans. We who have been contemporaries of the second Elizabethan reign have been pretty chauvinistic also!)
…
Dare I say what magic in thee lies?
And would I not be safer, if were still?
Desire’s in thy lip and in thine eyes
To make a man a pilgrim to thy will.
Thy warm firm flesh knows not the fire it feeds,
Or else doth know, and tortures for its game.
The modest word is canceled quite by deeds,
And mistresses and maidens oft are same.
Thy record shows a list of anxious boys
Who hungered, and were left more starving yet.
Their unfledg’d hearts you played upon as toys
And tore to tatters in thy silken net.
For this, fair witch, since feelings thou despise,
Thou’ll not have me, though hell itself should rise!
