Shakespearean Variation: Sonnet 106
When in the chronicle of wasted time,
which, desolate, is empty of all wights,
I come across some strange, enchanted rhyme
that devastates an army of fair knights,
or guides the course of fate to ruin best,
or puts a crown of thorns on weary brow,
I wonder what the gods have there express'd
that once was wise but alien seems now.
But all these cruel things are prophecies,
a stranger, greater thing prefiguring;
we call it 'love'. O man, avert your eyes!
Do not let it tempt you, its rhyme to sing!
For soon you will be slave for all your days
and in your poems devastation praise.
