Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
In the other world we use other words, painting
them with water on the desert’s sidewalk under • unwaver
ing / the / sky’s gaze, meant to be eaten up immediate
ly by our nearest star: we know we’re brief, a flash
of the magnesium bulb’s Lichtenberg lace or
in the hardpan land we inhabit, unwilling / it’s /
to unloosen • Edenic ancestry to us, to unearth / un
couth / the • treasure which lies (we believe) like an ocean
of luminous fish with their wayfinder’s lanterned
faces beneath us, sufficiently gilded to wake the dead
’s memory of what they no longer own: a form
for the nation-state to take, to write its penal colony’s
penalties upon, or hold, same as we hold our own
souls, which wager against us as soon as they’re able.


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
See, it’s a kind of crime scene,
as if the mind were a dime
novel, a scrim of need and semen,
all cinder and siren, a dim
prison where the miser dines
on rinds of desire, and the sinner,
sincere as denim, repeats Eden’s
demise — that luckless toss of dice.
Yet here at the rim of this demesne
a mitigating mise-en-scène:
a close-up of her mother stirring rice,
a glass of sparkling cider, a mince
pie spliced in — not to rescind or mend:
what mind denies mercies mine in the end.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
I’d have you known! It puzzles me forever
To hear, day in, day out, the words men use,
But never a single word about you, never.
Strange!—in your every gesture, worlds of news.
On busses people talk. On curbs I hear them;
In parks I listen, barbershop and bar.
In banks they murmur, and I sidle near them;
But none allude to you there. None so far.
I read books too, and turn the pages, spying:
You must be there, one beautiful as you!
But never, not by name. No planes are flying
Your name in lacy trailers past the blue
Marquees of heaven. No trumpets cry your fame.
Strange!—how no constellations spell your name!


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which proves more short than waste or ruining;
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No;—let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborn’d informer! a true soul,
When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
instead of entrance
Goodbye means Avoir
Sved’s dream said from nowhere
of aliquant angles
some spindle of the sun
empirically facted
deafening skin
open and afterwards
a cough is a couch
idled into
without rain
an island
easily a third worse
Indigo with a flame-red tongue


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one, hath every one, one shade,
And you but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
It’s a strange courageyou give me, ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrisetoward which you lend no part!
I
Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.
II
Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning,
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence,
Like a widow’s bird
Or an old horse.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blam’d, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet, love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon's young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
The jolt that comes to bones inside a tumbled streetcar
is what the painter considers as she strokes her-
self into story. There is less to the jolt that
comes as he shuts his eyes before the monitor, save
what he imagines—a lightning bolt, a god tapping
the shoulder. He imagines the sky swelling
with ceiling fans or the guano of extinct birds,
a jolt riding from his shoulder
blades to his eyelids, dropping with roller
coaster clacks to his fingers. Here, he dreams of Frida
Kahlo. Here, he says, let me spread my flesh out like a
table linen, let my bones be silver that touches,
making, again, that clack. My skull will be a glass,
set properly, I have class enough.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
The boy painted himself white and ran into the darkness.
We let the words “he may be dead, bury him,”
bury him.
We took his clothes to the rummage sale
in the basement of the mission
We put his photographs and drawings
in a birdcage and covered it with a starquilt.
For four nights voices carried clear to the river.
After winter so many storms moved in
strangers came among us
They danced
They shoveled in the shadows of trees
Then, somehow we all felt
all of us were of this one boy.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd.
And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)
Knock at a star with my exalted head.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn; and, passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept:
All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen;
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept,
And, from thenceforth, those Graces were not seen:
For they this queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura’s hearse:
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:
Where Homer’s spright did tremble all for grief,
And cursed the access of that celestial thief!


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express’d
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs,
Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;
Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep." Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Fayre is my love, when her fayre golden heares,
With the loose wynd ye waving chance to marke:
Fayre when the rose in her red cheekes appears,
Or in her eyes the fyre of love does sparke.
Fayre when her brest lyke a rich laden barke,
With pretious merchandize she forth doth lay:
Fayre when that cloud of pryde which oft doth dark
Her goodly light with smiles she drives away,
But fayrest she, when so she doth display
The gate with pearles and rubyes richly dight:
Throgh which her words so wise do make their way
To beare the message of her gentle spright.
The rest be works of natures wonderment,
But this the worke of harts astonishment.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Nevermind that keeping ashes
on the mantel feels ghoulish,
and comically impractical:
not just another thing,
a miniature memento urn, to dust,
but dust to dust—
I dread the conversational
Hara-kiri, not, that’s what’s leftof my brother, but, he died of suicide:
the chasm of silence following the leap—
so the cremains stay
in the office closet till they migrate
through no will of their own
to a moving box
I haven’t unpacked and likely won’t.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Her unawed face, whose pose so long assumed
Is touched with what reality we feel,
Bends to itself and, to itself resumed,
Restores a tender fiction to the real.
And in her artful posture movement lies
Whose timeless motion flesh must so conceal;
Yet what her pose conceals we might surmise
And might pretend to gather from her eyes
The final motion flesh gives up to art.
But slowly, if we watch her long enough,
The nerves grow subtler, and she moves apart
Into a space too dim with time and blood
For our set eyes to follow true enough,
Or nerves to guess about her, if they would.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
O patient shore, that canst not go to meet
Thy love, the restless sea, how comfortest
Thou all thy loneliness? Art thou at rest,
When, loosing his strong arms from round thy feet,
He turns away? Know’st thou, however sweet
That other shore may be, that to thy breast
He must return? And when in sterner test
He folds thee to a heart which does not beat,
Wraps thee in ice, and gives no smile, no kiss,
To break long wintry days, still dost thou miss
Naught from thy trust? Still, wait, unfaltering,
The higher, warmer waves which leap in spring?
O sweet, wise shore, to be so satisfied!
O heart, learn from the shore! Love has a tide!


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes;
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To side this title is impannelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part:
As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part,
And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love’s face
May still seem love to me, though alter’d new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many’s looks, the false heart’s history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue onward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both
Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature’s magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Long have I long’d to see my love againe,
Still have I wisht, but never could obtaine it;
Rather than all the world (if I might gaine it)
Would I desire my love’s sweet precious gaine.
Yet in my soule I see him everie day,
See him, and see his still sterne countenaunce,
But (ah) what is of long continuance,
Where majestie and beautie beares the sway?
Sometimes, when I imagine that I see him,
(As love is full of foolish fantasies)
Weening to kisse his lips, as my love’s fees,
I feele but aire: nothing but aire to bee him.
Thus with Ixion, kisse I clouds in vaine:
Thus with Ixion, feele I endles paine.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
Behold the gloomy tyrant’s awful form
Binding the captive earth in icy chains;
His chilling breath sweeps o’er the watery plains,
Howls in the blast, and swells the rising storm.
See from its centre bends the rifted tower,
Threat’ning the lowly vale with frowning pride,
O’er the scared flocks that seek its sheltering side,
A fearful ruin o’er their heads to pour.
While to the cheerful hearth and social board
Content and ease repair, the sons of want
Receive from niggard fate their pittance scant;
And where some shed bleak covert may afford,
Wan poverty, amidst her meagre host
Casts round her haggard eyes, and shivers at the frost.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
A boy came up the street and there was a girl.
"Hello," they said in passing, then didn’t pass.
They began to imagine. They imagined all night
and woke imagining what the other imagined.
Later they woke with no need to imagine.
They were together. They kept waking together.
Once they woke a daughter who got up
and went looking for something without looking back.
But they had one another. Then one of them died.
It makes no difference which. Either. The other
tried to imagine dying, and couldn’t really,
but died later, maybe to find out,
though probably not. Not everything that happens
is a learning experience. Maybe nothing is.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
My master/father sent me up from South
Carolina to Boston as a nine-year-old.
My mother's illiterate silence has been a death.
I wonder if she still labors in his fields.
His sister, dutiful but cold as snow,
gave me a little room in her house, below
the stairs with the Irish servants, who hated me
for the fatal flaw in my genealogy.
For the first time in my life I am at home
in this bevy of scholars, my first family.
Here, the wallpapers welcome me into every room,
and the mirrors see me, not my pedigree.
My sisters, Jerusha, Emilia, Elizabeth ...
But Mama's unlettered silence is a death.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
Jook joint's about to come alive!
It's like a bee outside a hive;
And when the hive begins to hum,
It's like a dim and distant drum;
And when the drum begins to beat,
It's like a circus down the street;
And when the street begins to fill,
It's like a sudden summer chill;
And just as summer simmers down,
It's like the fireworks over town.
Don't matter what the preachers say—
This congregation's here to stay
'Cause when the jook joint comes alive
Is when the Delta blues arrive!


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Both guitars run trebly.
One noodlesOver a groove.
The other slushes chords.Then they switch.
It’s quite an earnest affair.They close my eyes.
I close their eyes.
A hornBlares its inner air to brass.
A girl shakesHer ass.
Some dude does the same.
The music’sGone moot.
Who doesn’t love it when the bassDoesn’t hide?
When you can feel the trumpet peelOld oil and spit from deep down the emptyPit of a note or none or few?
So don’tGive up on it yet: the scenario.You know that it’s just as tired of youAs you are of it.
Still, there’s much more to itThan that.
It does not not get you quite wrong.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
From Daddy sprung my inborn ribaldry.
His crudeness destined me to be the same.
A seedlet, flowered from a shitty heap,
I came, the crowning glory of his aim.
From Mother I inherited ennui,
The leg irons of the queendom I once rattled.
But I won’t let such chains imprison me.
And there is just no telling what this brat’ll...!
This marriage thing? We snub our nose at it.
What’s pearl turns piss, what’s classy breeds what’s smutty.
But like it? Lump it? Neither’s exigent.
And I’m the end result of all that fucking.
Do what you will! This world’s your oyster, Pet.
But be forewarned. The sea might drown you yet.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Once my sister told me that from her summit at the city
pool she could see the yellow billows spread like gas
or dreams between kids’ legs. In something the size of the sea,
you can’t be sure who’s watching from above. Let’s say
it’s the Almighty, twirling His whistle, ready to blow it
at any moment and let loose the bottomless Apocalypse:
the ocean would make bone of a body, coral of bone.
Piss, and a tiger-fish darts through a skull-hole, a weed
weaves itself through ribs. You, too, have seen
the bulbs flash from the sea. You, too, have felt
it breathing down your neck. You eat fish. You’ve heard
that mermaids sing. My dreams are as beleaguered as the next
Joe’s, my happiness as absurd, but I’m not going to go
piss in the ocean about it. No, not in the ocean.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
We mourn the broken things, chair legs
wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,
the threadbare clothes. We work the magic
of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.
We save what we can, melt small pieces
of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones
for soup. Beating rugs against the house,
we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading
across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw
the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs
out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.
I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,
listen for passing cars. All day we watch
for the mail, some news from a distant place.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather’d creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;
So runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind;
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
More then most faire, full of the living fire,
Kindled above unto the maker neere:
No eies but joyes, in which al powers conspire,
That to the world naught else be counted deare.
Thrugh your bright beams doth not the blinded guest
Shoot out his darts to base affections wound?
But Angels come to lead fraile mindes to rest
In chast desires on heavenly beauty bound.
You frame my thoughts and fashion me within,
You stop my toung, and teach my hart to speake,
You calme the storme that passion did begin,
Strong thrugh your cause, but by your vertue weak.
Dark is the world, where your light shined never;
Well is he borne, that may behold you ever.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
He crawls through the cracks
of my stone foundation,
sly and sleek as
I tempt him with food.
He stays out of habit; I cook
out of love for things that move.
We grow accustomed to each other’s
trails and smells, the skins we’ve shed
along the long, long road
of rubbing each other smooth.
Till all the skins we’ve shed lie sparkling
like so many stones in this desert land.
I scoop him up in my hand
and eat him.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
The only time I’ve been to Switzerland
was early one spring on a train through the mountains.
There was a lake—I guess it was Lucerne?
Above me cliff tops ridged with snow fanned out
so that where I stood at the edge of the platform
light bathed the empty siding all around
with a diffused opalescence off the water.
Behind the station must have been a town,
spires of churches, municipal arcades,
and coffee squelching in the fogged cafés.
I never saw the place, though I remember
thinking this is Switzerland and took
a mind-shot of the pines, breathing in the cold
as the porter whistled at us to reboard.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
what thoughts I have of you tonight, Du Bois
of bodies rocked and minds embalmed in bark
our blanched arrival—seethin with scandal's mark
nowadays I peep you in the bean-pie seller's poise
with that silhouette fit for bust or cameo
I can't always divine your debonair birth
or your boocoo brain laborin like an earth
in hallelujah's ether, somehow duckin death's blow
sure sprung from Imhotep's kundalini
stitchin white reconstruction's funeral shroud
scriptin Philly dirges for the cryin out loud
cussin Garvey's name over martinis
sometimes I wonder if you double agent on the page
or mastermind of our ordered rage


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
How can my Muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour’st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
O! give thyself the thanks, if aught in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;
For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thyself dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
So am I as the rich, whose blessed key,
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming in that long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special-blest,
By new unfolding his imprison’d pride.
Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is’t not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?
Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engross’d:
Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken;
A torment thrice three-fold thus to be cross’d:
Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,
But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail;
Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail:
And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
All the kids came rumbling down the wood tenement
Shaky stairs, sneakers slapping against the worn
Tin tread edges, downhall came Pepo, Chino, Cojo,
Curly bursting from the door like shells exploding
Singing "I'm a Rican Doodle Dandy" and "What shall
We be today, Doctors or Junkies, Soldiers or Winos?"
Pepo put a milk crate on a Spanish Harlem johnny pump
And drops opened like paratroopers carrying war news.
Then Urban Renewal attacked the pump, cleared the slums
Blamed Puerto Rico and dispersed the Spies, blasting
Them into the Army or Anywhere Avenue in the Bronx.
And nobody, but nobody, came back from that summer.
Just as Korea was death in service to the warring Nation
The Bronx was death in service to the negligent Nation


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,—
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Thanks, no thanks, to eternal life. What pleasure
watching my old house broken-beamed, grey
elephant brought to its knees? White ash—gone
the way of trilobites and horsehair fern,
even the nuclear-proof cockroach in deep-freeze.
Cueballs knock each other randomly; reverse.
the tape and movement looks the same, illustrating
the end of time: things happen, but don't matter.
And if Lethe strips you like a swimmer
from his trunks, where will "I" be? If Heaven
without you is Hell, how will I know? A forever
of no-never-mind does not appeal, God's heart
a cold, contracting cinder. Give me the white light,
the slit of split-second calm, and knowing over is over.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
In the dirt you dig fragments.
Turn them and ponder.
Weed chard. Forms
morph like clouds.
At lunch, you write down
how in this jungle
a gem-backed toad startled
and hopped away—
how June tiger lilies trumpet the sun.
In the bean patch brown spiders,
egg sacs on their backs.
Toddling through shadows,
sturdy, wobbling,
fragile, pregnant as summer is—


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
Both lying on our sides, making love in
spoon position when she’s startled, What’s that?
She means the enormous ship passing before you—
maybe not that large, is it a freighter
or a passenger ship? But it seems huge in the dark
and it’s so close. That’s a poem you say, D. H.
Lawrence—Have you built your ship of death,
have you? O build your ship of death,
for you will need it. Right here it would be good
if there were a small orchestra on board, you’d hear
them and say to her, That piece is called Autumn,
that’s what the brave musicians played as the Titanic
went under—and then you could name this poem “Autumn.”
But no, the ship is silent, its white lights glow in the darkness.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Flaunting in the atrium, ostentatious at the gates
I saw a shooting star thru a window on Alcatraz Ave
& cladding struck up against those who demand
We stomach the stick and tend the commode
They're selling trees in the paint store! trees in the paint store
Datebook chips in the soft skin of our wrists
On NBC, CNN, and NPR broken windows are weeping
We'll have 35 apples and shrieking in the thickets
Aloft in the air golden and golden the dial among the mounds
So much is stunted in understanding of what a light can be
They storm the scrimmage line and clear-cut bran and germ
We want the petal unto itself, the unalterable vessel
The arc end of the precipice grows 1.9% annually
What was popular music like before the crisis?


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arriv'd so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n:
All is, if I have grace to use it so
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
Dear Letters,
Fond Letters,
Must I with you part?
You are such a source of joy
To my lonely heart.
Sweet Letters,
Dear Letters,
What a tell you tell;
O, no power on earth can break
This strange mystic spell!
Dear Letters,
Fond Letters,
You my secret know—Don’t you tell it, any one—
Let it live and grow.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall....
Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’
tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips
in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given
to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which
saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in
vanity....
Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,
whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man
who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for
dessert served himself a chilled fedora....


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
“What a big book for such a little head!”
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
Count your fingers
Count your toes
Count your nose holes
Count your blessings
Count your stars (lucky or not)
Count your loose change
Count the cars at the crossing
Count the miles to the state line
Count the ticks you pulled off the dog
Count your calluses
Count your shells
Count the points on the antlers
Count the newjack's keys
Count your cards; cut them again


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d,
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And perspective it is best painter’s art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictur’d lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d;
And when a woman woos, what woman’s son
Will sourly leave her till he have prevail’d?
Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine by thy beauty being false to me.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge,
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore,
Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite
Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw
A greater cord, and then a greater yet;
Till at the last across the chasm swung
The cable then the mighty bridge in air!
So we may send our little timid thought
Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands—
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep—
Thought after thought until the little cord
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break,
And we are anchored to the Infinite!


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
When the strange girl skips rope her hair flies
like a porpoise. She collects things that melt
and things that tick, circles and cubes
and checkerboards in a drawer
she can pull out from her navel.
Other children, alerted by the rumble
of marbles in her chest, chase her
across the field. She insists she is only
hungry, but they pin her down and open her
up. Cockroaches rush out and bullies run
and squeal, crushing carapaces underfoot.
She gathers as many as she can,
tells them she’s sorry there is no lock. She’s sorry,
but good children shouldn’t have secrets.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
They put me in a dead boy’s clothes dead Joseph
Except he wasn’t dead at first they put
Me in his clothes dead Joseph’s     after Joseph
Died and I used to call him Joe     they put
Me in   Joe’s clothes at first before he died
Joe wasn’t five yet when I met him      I
Was seven     I was seven when he died
Still but a whole year bigger then but I
Wore his clothes still and the whole year I lived with
Momma Varina      and with daddy Jeff
I never lived so good as when I lived with
Them and especially it was daddy Jeff
Who kept me fed and wearing those nice clothes
Until they fit as tight as bandages


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
My future will not copy fair my past—
I wrote that once; and thinking at my side
My ministering life-angel justified
The word by his appealing look upcast
To the white throne of God, I turned at last,
And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied
To angels in thy soul!  Then I, long tried
By natural ills, received the comfort fast,
While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim’s staff
Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.
I seek no copy now of life’s first half:
Leave here the pages with long musing curled,
And write me new my future’s epigraph,
New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
dreaming the lives of the ancestors,
you awake, justly terrified of this world:you could dance underwater and not get wet,
you hear, but the pressure is drowning you:
you’re awake, but just terrified of this world,
where all solids are ice: underwater boogie,
you hear, but the press sure is drowning you:
the igbo were walking, not dancing:
where all solids are ice, underwater boogie
is good advice, because they’re quick to melt:
the igbo were straight up walking, not dancing:
and you’ve still got to get through this life:
take my advice, quickly: they’re melting:you could dance underwater and not get wet:
and you’ve got to, to get through this life still
dreaming the lives of the ancestors


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
When I was
nearly six my
father
opened his magic
doctor bag:
two
tongue depressors fastened by
a rubber
band;
one flick
of his hairy wrist
and lo!
we invented
flight.


Create a beautiful sonnet.
Sonnet:
Falling leaves and falling men!
When the snows of winter fall,
And the winds of winter blows,
Will be woven Nature’s pall.
Let us, then, forsake our dead;
For the dead will surely wait While we rush upon the foe,
Eager for the hero’s fate.
Leaves will come upon the trees;
Spring will show the happy race;
Mothers will give birth to sons—
Loyal souls to fill our place.
Wherefore should we rest and rush?
Soldiers, we must fight and save Freedom now, and give our foes
All their country should—a grave!


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
In our house, all the clocks are turned off and the mirrors
Don’t work. We sit like bread in a stay-fresh wrapper,
Keep ourselves to our selves. Sometimes the speeches
Are so beautiful it hurts. On the porch where we can’t be
Seen to smile, the honeysuckle meshes with silent
Weeds. We rock back and forth, back and forth in our long
Black dresses. Mosquitoes taste our blood and find it good.
Inside, candles are lit every night and keep going
Until they burn themselves down. We kiss our fingers
To our lips like Italians, promise we’ll never look back.Whip-poor-will. When the doorbell rings we don’t answer.
In winter, the fur grows long on the horses and the ice
Grows long on the eaves. We sleep in the same bed
Like good animals, braid our hair together, tailor
Our limbs to fit. Conspiracy of wood.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.
I watch the woods for deer who never come.
I know the hes and shes in autumn
rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen
apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work
so I may let the crows in corn believe
it’s me their caws are meant to warn,
and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves
they know me too. They know the boy
who lives inside me still won’t go away.
The deer are ghosts who slip between the light
through trees, so you may only hear the snap
of branches in the thicket beyond hope.
I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
There is a drear and lonely tract of hell
From all the common gloom removed afar:
A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,
Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.
I walked among them and I knew them well:
Men I had slandered on life's little star
For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar
Upon their brows of woe ineffable.
But as I went majestic on my way,
Into the dark they vanished, one by one,
Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day,
The dream of all my glory was undone,—
And, with a fool's importunate dismay,
I heard the dead men singing in the sun.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
Sybaritic afterlife I don’t crave you.
I like daylight. I like crowds.
I don’t think it will be charming underground.
The silence will be sudden then last.
What’s chic will shrink.
There won’t be any pretty, pity.
Will never peaches there, or air.
We’ll be so squashed and sour there.
I don’t want a cold place.
Don’t want a threadbare
clamp and consequence all old.
Our loneliness will be prolonged then go too far.
Oh fuck it’s true.
Then nothing left of you.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
Profound simplicity of intellect,
And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.
So held she through her girlhood; as it were
An angel-water'd lily, that near God
Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt aw'd:
Because the fulness of the time was come.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
The sovereign beauty which I do admire,
Witness the world how worthy to be praised:
The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire
In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised;
That being now with her huge brightness dazed,
Base thing I can no more endure to view;
But looking still on her, I stand amazed
At wondrous sight of so celestial hue.
So when my tongue would speak her praises due,
It stopped is with thought's astonishment:
And when my pen would write her titles true,
It ravish'd is with fancy's wonderment:
Yet in my heart I then both speak and write
The wonder that my wit cannot endite.


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
You flinch. Something flickers, not fleeing your face. My
Heart hammers at the ceiling, telling my tongue
To turn it down. Too late. The something climbs, leaps, is
Falling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainy
Lord. I chose the wrong word. I am wrong for not choosing
Merely to smile, to pull you toward me and away from
What you think of as that other me, who wanders lost among ...
Among whom? The many? The rare? I wish you didn’t care.
I watch you watching her. Her very shadow is a rage
That trashes the rooms of your eyes. Do you claim surprise
At what she wants, the poor girl, pelted with despair,
Who flits from grief to grief? Isn’t it you she seeks? And
If you blame her, know that she blames you for choosing
Not her, but me. Love is never fair. But do we — should we — care?


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
Fresh spring the herald of loves mighty king,
In whose cote armour richly are displayed
All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring
In goodly colours gloriously arrayd:
Goe to my love, where she is carelesse layd,
Yet in her winters bowre not well awake:
Tell her the joyous time wil not be staid
Unless she doe him by the forelock take.
Bid her therefore her selfe soone ready make,
To wayt on love amongst his lovely crew:
Where every one that misseth then her make,
Shall be by him amearst with penance dew.
Make hast therefore sweet love, whilest it is prime,
For none can call againe the passèd time.


Write a classic sonnet.
Sonnet:
If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me?  Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors, another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change
That’s hardest.  If to conquer love, has tried,
To conquer grief, tries more, as all things prove,
For grief indeed is love and grief beside.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me—wilt thou?  Open thy heart wide,
And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
when the cultivators of corpses are busy seeding
plague across vast acres of the land, choking schools
and churches in the motley toxins of grief, breeding
virile shoots of violence so soon verdant even fools
fear to tread in their wake :: when all known tools
of resistance are clutched in the hands of the vile
like a wilting bouquet, cut from their roots, while
the disempowered slice smiles across their own faces
and hide the wet knives in writhing thickets of hair
for future use :: when breathing in the ashen traces
of dreams deferred, the detonator’s ticking a queer
echo that amplifies instead of fading :: when there-
you-are is where-you-were and the sunset groans
into the atlantic, setting blue fire to dark white bones.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
IF ANYONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON EVER THEN HEY
I AM HERE IT WOULD BE NICE TO TALK SOMETIME
INFOMERCIALS HAVE STARTED AND I KIND OF WANT TO DIE
I’M PRETTY SURE THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY FOR A MORGUE
OK SO ACTUALLY IT’S FOR THE BIBLE OR SOMETHING
SO IT’S A COMMERICAL FOR TRYING TO BE HAPPY OR SOMETHING
BUT I AM NOT HAPPY TONIGHT NO I AM NOT JUST HERE
IF HAPPINESS EVER WORKED THEN HOW—I DON’T KNOW
HAPPINESS IS A LIZARD IN THE SUNLIGHT GETTING WARM
AND THEN IN THE NIGHT BENEATH A ROCK EATING FLIES
AND SWALLLOWING THE MEAT OF THE TRASH OF THE DIRT
AH, SO TONIGHT IS A LITTLE DRUNK AND OK OK OK
THAT IS GOOD SO LET ME BE—THERE IS NO LOVE TONIGHT
GOD IS LIKE BONO—SOME DICKWAD NO ONE WILL EVER MEET OR LIKE


Compose a sonnet.
Sonnet:
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth remov’d from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time’s leisure with my moan;
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
That barren tender of a poet’s debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory being dumb;
For I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
My monkey-wrench man is my sweet patootie;
the lover of my life, my youth and age.
My heart belongs to him and to him only;
the children of my flesh are his and bear his rage
Now grown to years advancing through the dozens
the honeyed kiss, the lips of wine and fire
fade blissfully into the distant years of yonder
but all my days of Happiness and wonder
are cradled in his arms and eyes entire.
They carry us under the waters of the world
out past the starposts of a distant planet
And creeping through the seaweed of the ocean
they tangle us with ropes and yarn of memories
where we have been together, you and I.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
I was cold and leaned against the big oak tree
as if it were my mother wearing a rough apron
of bark, her upraised arms warning of danger.
Through those boughs and leaves I saw
dark patches of sky. I thought a brooding
witch waited to catch me up from under
branches and take me, careening on her broom,
to her home in the jaundiced moon.
I looked to the roof of mom and dad's house
and wondered if the paisley couch patterns
would change during the day. My brother peeked
from a window and waved. When the bus came,
I pawed away from the trunk, fumbled,
and took my first step toward not returning.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,—
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran:
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, tho’ I be old,
Time is my debtor for my years untold.


Write a sonnet in 14 lines.
Sonnet:
I passed him by at first. From the photograph
Peered sepia eyes, blindered, unappeased
From a lair of brows and beard: one not amazed
At anything, as if to have looked enough
Then turned aside worked best for him—as if
Night vision was the discipline that eased
The weight of what he saw. A man’s gaze posed
Too long in the sun goes blank; comes to grief.
That face could be a focus for this back room,
For pack-rat papers strewn as if in rage,
Fond notes unread: each wary eye a phial
Unstopped to let huge Melville out, to calm
The sea of pages; Melville in older age:
The grown man’s sleepy defiance of denial.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,
Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call'd
Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose th' enthrall'd
From exile, public sale, and slav'ry's chain.
Friend of the poor, the wrong'd, the fetter-gall'd,
Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain!
Thou hast achiev'd a part; hast gain'd the ear
Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause;
Hope smiles, joy springs, and tho' cold caution pause
And weave delay, the better hour is near,
That shall remunerate thy toils severe
By peace for Afric, fenc'd with British laws.
Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love
From all the just on earth, and all the blest above!


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
And therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy.  Cheeks as pale
As these you see, and trembling knees that fail
To bear the burden of a heavy heart,—
This weary minstrel-life that once was girt
To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail
To pipe now ’gainst the valley nightingale
A melancholy music,—why advert
To these things?  O Belovëd, it is plain
I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace
To live on still in love, and yet in vain,—
To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.


Produce a sonnet.
Sonnet:
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.


Write a poetic sonnet.
Sonnet:
Day and night, the lake dreams of sky.
A privacy as old as the mountains
And her up there, stuck among peaks. The whole eye
Fastened on hawk, gatherings of cloud or stars,
So little trespass. An airplane once
Crossed her brow; she searched but could not find
A face. Having lived with such strict beauty
She comes to know how the sun is nothing
But itself and the path it throws; the moon
A riddled stone. If only a hand
Would tremble along her cheek, would disturb. Even the elk
Pass by, drawn to the spill of creeks below—
How she cannot help abundance, even as it leaves
Her, as it sings all the way down the mountain.


Write an English sonnet.
Sonnet:
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know
Time’s thievish progress to eternity.
Look! what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, deliver’d from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.


Compose a 14-line sonnet.
Sonnet:
peach of a grape
in his fingertips
like holding home
he noses its muskTaste, he says
and parts my lips with a globe and
a thumb I lick
I bite the thick skin
His Arkansas aches
sweet
on my tongue
His hand vines my chin my throatMy face flames
To the lady on the bus
he brags
Her blush comes from my touch.