Spencer Heath Archive

Item 932

A sonnet of Shakespeare copied out by Heath in a notebook as indicating Shakespeare’s protest against ‘modernism’ in his day.

1950?

Original -> 912

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the times do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth and where they did proceed?

0, know, sweet love, I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument;

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.