S<\/span>hakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 103 laments the limits of language to capture the thing it describes. \u201cLook in your glass,\u201d the poet says, and you will see a face that overwhelms \u201cmy blunt invention quite.\u201d The reality dulls the poet\u2019s lines and disgraces him. And it would be a sin to mar the subject of his poem by striving to mend it, a subject that was perfectly well before he began.<\/p>\n In short, there is \u201cmore, much more\u201d in the face itself than any verse can capture. So even if his poem lives on, it\u2019s not going to be adequate to communicate the beauty of the subject that it speaks about.<\/p>\n <\/strong>Sonnet 106 expresses the limits of poetry in a different way, painting with a palette of theological language. Time past is \u201cwasted time,\u201d and in the chronicle of that time the poet finds descriptions of beautiful ladies and lovely knights. They write blazons\u2014poems that celebrate the beauties of particular features of the body, hand, foot, lip, eye, brow.<\/p>\n <\/span>But those antique pens were really writing about the speaker\u2019s beloved. All the beauties they celebrate were merely prophecies of the ultimate beauty that has appeared now in the present. The poem thus turns on a contrast between the \u201cwasted time\u201d and \u201cthis our time\u201d; the first has glimpses and intimations of a beauty yet to come, but in the present the beauty has now come. It\u2019s not surprising, then, that the older poets couldn\u2019t sing the full worth of that future beauty. They were looking with \u201cdivining eyes,\u201d through a glass darkly.<\/p>\n <\/span>But that doesn\u2019t mean that the poet of \u201cthese present days\u201d can fully sing the praise either. Though they now see the beauty appeared, and have eyes to wonder, but still their tongues lag behind and can\u2019t fully express what their eyes behold. As wonderful and powerful as poetry can be, it is no substitute for the thing itself.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 103 laments the limits of language to capture the thing it describes. \u201cLook in your glass,\u201d the poet says, and you will see a face that overwhelms \u201cmy blunt invention quite.\u201d The reality dulls the poet\u2019s lines and disgraces him. And it would be a sin to mar the subject of his poem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[578,1724],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shakespeare","category-sonnets"],"yoast_head":"\n