Sir Patrick Stewart has been reading, simply and with charm, a Sonnet of Shakespeare every day. He is up to S. 120.
One of you readers challenged me to do the same. Since I’ve known the Bard’s poetry, man and boy, I thought I would take the gauntlet up.
This entry marks a milestone, the first “series” of the Sonnets, the so-called “Procreation Sonnets” hereby conclude. We will continue with the “Fair Youth” Sonnets and eventually get to the “Dark Lady” Sonnets. There’s a lot of human experience, good and bad, coming up.
Today, however, here is Sonnet 17, with a brief homage to Sir Patrick.
#ASonnetADay – SONNET 17.
Thus, the final “Procreation Sonnet”.
And a gentle homage to @SirPatStew for motivation. pic.twitter.com/agJc3CgQgw— Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (@fatherz) August 24, 2020
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“old men of less truth than tongue.” Are we perhaps thinking of a certain politician, Father?
Our Lady of Vulcan is certainly appropriate for August 24, which, according to Pliny the Younger, was the date of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79—surely, to the Romans, an act of Vulcan, and one day after the festival of Vulcan, the Vulcanalia, on August 23.
(Some archaeologists now argue, based on physical evidence, that the eruption more likely occurred later in the fall. It’s possible that Pliny simply misremembered the date, or, perhaps more likely, that the date given in Pliny’s letter to Tacitus was garbled at some point in the transmission of the text.)