Swizzle Stick

Shakespeare's Eclipses

- a found poem -

1.Eclipse as an ill omen
These late eclipses in the sun and moon
portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of
nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds
itself scourged by the sequent effects.
—Gloucester in King Lear

2. Eclipse as metaphor for psychological darkness
My wife, my wife! What wife? I have no wife.
O insupportable! O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that th’ affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.
—Othello in Othello

3. Eclipse as that which mars beauty
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done.
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
—Sonnet 35


April 11: Eclipse/s