English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy
Sonnet 30
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A. L. Rowse in his Shakespeare's Sonnets writes: The second line of this sonnet achieved world-wide circulation in literature of the 20th Century, with its concern with time. It was taken as epigraph by Marcel Proust for the greatest of all modern novels A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
Introduction to the Sonnets
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