Sonnet #27 – third Shakespearean Sonnet on recovering the ability to love. Here my heart is compared to a leaf driven from the tree in Autumn’s cold wind.
O, how you make me quiver as the red
and weak’ning leaf upon the autumn’d trees
once sapped of strength I’ll fall in browning beds
of death prepared by gentle chilling breeze
which from your fertile lips ensures my fall
my funeral flutters downward to the earth
my death is hastened by your frozen call
and waits impossibly for love’s rebirth
Somehow the death-white blanket of the snows
give hope despite the treachery of cold
Shall I survive this frigid death? Who knows
what prophecy of winter has foretold?
But my decay will feed the harden’d soil
My soul will till the earth with joyous toil
Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
Phil Wyman: Dim Saesneg 