nor boundless sea

It's Shakespeare's alleged birthday, which is among the things I try to celebrate in National Poetry Month, since, let's be honest, I owe a lot of my life to that dude. I've celebrated Shakespeare in a lot of different ways, but in the last couple of years I've taken to posting two poems: a sonnet, and a poem that is also, in some way, in debt to Shakespeare.

It was not difficult to persuade the captain
to sail a little off course and leave him
at the island. With his boxes on the sand
and the ship getting small, he was home.
Foolishly, he was disappointed that Ariel
was not amazingly there to meet him.
A part had secretly dreamed it would be a woman.
But that lasted briefly and then he was happy.
How dear the bare place looked. How good it felt
getting the supplies up to the house.

—Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), "Prospero Goes Home" from The Dance Most of All, 2009.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack!
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet LXV

Thanks for everything, Will.