"Sonnet-ry!"

As many of you know, one of the delightful little rituals I love greeting the day with is reading a sonnet to my little princess, Lucia. I love seeing the twinkle in her eye when I rouse myself from my slumber and exclaim "Sonnet-ry!"

Today, we read Sonnet LXXVI, which I am reproducing in its entirety below:

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time 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?
O, 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.

As is common to any sincere, if not entirely rational, attempt to understand the sonnet, there are many interpretations. However, I choose to read it as a celebration of constancy, which reaches its fulfillment in the sonnet Tina and I chose to celebrate our union with:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Thus, I look forward to tomorrow, where once again, Lucia and I can enjoy our "Sonnet-ry!"