re: #41 Cato the Elder

Sonnet LXVI, the which proveth that the poet knows no law of “good style” that cannot be broken with impunity by him who knoweth what he doth, viz. run-on sentences and beginning ten lines with the self-same word.

EGO POETA AMERICANVS SVPRA GRAMMATICOS STO

I don’t know what that means! teach me!

This site is great. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, a mailing list where you get one a day.

Here is today’s:

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress’ brows are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so