Summer Sonnets

DC: Tomorrow is the first day of summer, and that makes me think of a famous sonnet by Shakesepeare. Cue the Elizabethan music!

(music: Elizabethan tune)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course … untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time … thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this … and this gives life to thee.

(music: Elizabethan tune end)

The Shakespeare sonnets are an enduring inspiration to those who are young and in love. To elaborate on that point, please welcome someone who is, um, well, he's young. Our only listener at Wendell Wilkie High School, Mr. Bubby Spamden.

JP: Hello, Mr. Connelly.

DC: Bubby, the high school years are a very emotional time.

JP: (shocked, wounded) What do you mean by that?!

DC: Nothing. They just are. But I think your feelings during these teen years are also very very intense … including those first stirrings of love.

JP: I don't have a girlfriend yet, Mr. Connelly.

DC: Of course I wasn't talking about you.

JP: I have a love for all of humanity, but no one person in particular.

DC: OK.

JP: No matter WHAT people might tell you when they cook up stories about some names on a piece of paper in my locker. That's all lies.

DC: OK!

JP: And especially don't listen to this one teacher in particular who says I was passing notes to somebody in class, but I wasn't, right then.

DC: Was this by any chance a person named … Jennifer?

JP: (suddenly short of breath) Why do you say THAT name?

DC: Well, I heard …

JP: Did SHE say something to you … something about US?

DC: No.

JP: She's not here, is she? 'Cause I do have a summer sonnet I wrote for her, which I'd read for you, but only if she's not around to hear it.

DC: But you wrote it for her.

JP: Right, but if she heard me read it, I'd just die, you know?

DC: Though you're willing to read it for all these strangers?
But not for the one person for which it was intended?
That doesn't make sense.

JP: It's been a real long time since you were in high school, hasn't it.

DC: I'd love to hear your poem.

JP: It's a sonnet.

DC: And you follow the rules?

JP: There are rules?

DC: I think so! Fourteen lines. And it has to be … um … Ionic.

JP: Ironic?

DC: Ionic. Or Iambic or something.

JP: Yeah, I think it's pretty much … like that.

DC: What does it mean for something to be Iambic?
Could you give us a brief definition?

JP: School is over, man. Don't do this to me.
Let me read my poem and get out of here, OK?

DC: OK. Do you want the Elizabethan music?

JP: No, it's for Jennifer!

DC: Well it's also Jenniferian.

JP: OK, then. Why didn't you say so?

(music: Elizabethan tune)

(clear throat) A Sonnet for … my True Love in 6th Hour Science.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
OK! Thou and a summer's day are both equally hot.

Lovely and mild when first light does play
The day gets buggy, whilst thou does not.

At noon the sun's beacon upon us does shine
And quiets the love thoughts we're longing to utter.

We shade our dazed eyes with polarized blinds
And slather our bodies with cocoanut butter.

But thou and the day are most lovely at dusk.
In tiki torch light thou dost glow like a fairy

Thou makest me think of an elephant's tusk.
Very curvy and smooth, and also quite scary.

I will pass you this note but your name I won't mention.
To protect you from teasing and a loveless detention.

(music: Elizabethan tune end)

DC: Bubby, I think that's just beautiful.

JP: Do you think it's, like, good enough to make somebody fall in love with you, even if you're not in the cool group?

DC: I don't see how it can fail.

JP: It's been a really, really long time since you were in high school, man.

DC: Our sensitive young lover and poet … Bubby Spamden.