Sonnet IX

Podcast Shakespeare

The Sonnet Sessions continue...

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William Shakespeare, Sonnet IX

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye, That thou consum'st thy self in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow and still weep That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow well may keep By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind: Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused the user so destroys it. No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

Music:

Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Fantasia on Greensleeves“, from Sir John in Love, opera adapted from William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1928

Benjamin Britten, Corpus Christi Carol - performed by boy soprano Sebastian Carrington

Thomas Tallis, Spem in Alium (1750)