<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
	<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8">
	<TITLE></TITLE>
	<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Namo WebEditor v4.0">
	<META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20040408;14051200">
	<META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="20040408;14054200">
	<STYLE>
	<!--
		@page { margin-left: 3.18cm; margin-right: 3.18cm; margin-top: 2.54cm; margin-bottom: 2.54cm }
		P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm }
	-->
	</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY LANG="en">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
	<tr>
		<td>
<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><b>
<font size="4">Two Sonnets of Shakespeare</font></b></p>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<FONT SIZE=3>ON the occasion of the 400th birth anniversary of
Shakespeare, I present to you today two of the great Shakespearean
sonnets. The sonnets, as you know, are all about love. They are
however characterised by an incredible intensity and perhaps an
equally incredible complexity, for the Shakespearean feeling is of
that category.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.44cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Shakespeare has treated love in a novel way; he has
given a new figure to that common familiar sentiment. And
incidentally he has given a new sense and bearing to Death. From a
human carnal base there is a struggle, an effort here to rise into
something extracorporeal; that is, something outside and independent
of the body and impersonal. The sense of the first sonnet is this:
the body decays and dies, even as bleak winter seizes upon the
beauties of Nature or black Night swallows up the light of the day.
But love lingers still – as the song of sweet birds – and the
dying cadence of love curiously invokes and evokes a resurgent love
in the beloved. The second sonnet hymns the soul's conquest over
Death. The soul is that which is sinless in the sinful, it is the
pure, the unsullied – the immortal love – in this filth and dirt
of a mortal body with its crude passions. Death eats away the body,
but in this way the soul grows and eats away Death. This is the final
epiphany, the death of Death and the resurgence of the soul divine in
its love divine.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.44cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Sonnet </I>73</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>That time of year thou mayst in me behold</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>When'yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang </FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 178</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>In me thou seest the twilight of such day</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>As after sunset fadeth in the west,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Which by and by black night doth take away,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>In me thou seest the glowing of such fire</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>As the death-bed whereon it must expire,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:3.02cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>This thou perceiv'st which makes thy love more strong,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:3.02cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>To love that well which thou must leave ere long.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3><I>Sonnet </I>146</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>[Fool'd by] these rebel pow'rs that thee array,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Why so large cost, having so short a lease,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>And let that pine to aggravate thy store;</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.01cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Within be fed, without be rich no more.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.99cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-left:2.99cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=LEFT style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.36cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>The Shakespearean conclusion 'And Death once dead,
there's no more dying then' resounds in our ears like an echo of the
famous lines of Sri Aurobindo in <I>Savitri – </I></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.36cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>Even there shall come as a high crown of all</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-left:1.98cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=3>The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.</FONT><BR>
		</P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 179</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" ALIGN="right" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"> 
<a href="-00_Ccontent"><img src="/Nolini/Volume-2/_Gif_Image/home03a.gif" width="40" height="51" border="0"></a></P>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>
</BODY>
</HTML>