In Sleep A King

In my senior year of high school, our English teacher made us do two things. The first was to choose a Shakespeare sonnet and memorise it. She told us that it would be good for us, and useful one day. For the second, we were tasked with creating an anthology of poems and excerpts from books that mattered most to us at the time, a commonplace book of our seventeen and eighteen year old selves. We were asked to read an excerpt from our anthologies, in front of the entire class; we were also asked to explain why what we chose to read mattered to us. One kid shared the scene from A Clockwork Orange where the protagonist violently enjoys Beethoven. 

What I remember most about both assignments is that we were encouraged respond emotionally to both our Shakespeare and our anthologies. There was no pressure to define what these texts meant or how they worked; no beating the poems with hoses, in the inimitable words of Billy Collins, to find out what they really meant. We were allowed love without judgement.

Because of this, I still remember the poem I chose to read to the class when it was my turn, and my sonnet. Over a dozen years later I can still recite most of it without looking up the text. Particularly over the past few months, as I've missed being in Oxford, it has regularly come to mind. Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter / in sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

Sunset at Osney Lock, 17 September 2021

Sonnet 87

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou knowst thy estimate.

The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,

And for that riches where is my deserving?

The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,

And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thy self thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,

Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking,

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,

Comes home again, on better judgement making.

    Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter:

    In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

~ William Shakespeare