Sonnet 73
Shakespeare
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
K. 453
Karl Kirchwey, from At the Palace of Jove 2002
On May 27, 1784,
as he followed Vienna’s back streets home,
Mozart paused, startled, by a pet shop door
and listened to the allegretto theme
from his own piano concerto in G Major
repeated by a starling in a cage.
He’d written it only five weeks before—
had God given them both the same message?
He counted out thirty-four copper kreuzer.
Pleasure was like the iridescent sheen
in the dark plumage: an imagination livelier,
perhaps, more fecund and ready than his own!
He entered this in his new accounts ledger,
but where the price should go, he wrote the tune
instead—transcribed it a second time, rather—
and then, in his small hand, wrote Das war schön.
Pages: 1 2