Some Sonnets for your consideration

Shakespeare's Sonnets are something that i'm not overly familiar with. Over the next few days, I'll delve into them a bit more. For now though, here are two that caught my eye.

The first is Sonnet 19 (I wonder if it's overlooked because it comes immediately after the famous Sonnet 18). A classmate led a discussion on Sonnets in a teaching class earlier this semester and he used 19, which I thought was a fun read.

Devouring Time blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted do allow,
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

I like this one because of the sense that the subject of this sonnet will live on forever, even should Time rob her of her youth and eventually her life, because she is put into prose. Since she is written about, she will be remembered as Shakespeare remembers her, for all of time.

As I went through the sonnets, #14 caught my eye, possibly because it mentions "Astronomy" and one of my favorite poems is "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman, though the sonnet has a differing subject matter.

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;
And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert; 
   Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
   Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

This Sonnet urgers the reader to get on with continuing his line, or else his family will die out. Foreseeing this does not take much knowledge in the stars (astrology) it's just common sense.