863: to Shakespeare's 29th

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,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

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 remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29 - William Shakespeare

What have I, when, as in your twenty-nine,

I hate my state for what its lack holds full,

and find, at the foundation of the whine,

not even love to look back on, nor lull?

I never knew it. Or it is forgot,

and how great, Aphrodite, to forget?

Forsaken by the one who conquers thought,

forgotten by the one who did beget?

Yet when I think of my own evidence,

the proof of loving that I’ve given out,

I find the very same mute reticence

that I find round me when I look about.

‘tis not a lack of love that plagues the lone,

but of lucky love’s chances yet unshown.