Thy Sweet Love Remember’d — Three Shakespeare Sonnets (2009)
Written for James John and the Queens College Choir
Performers:
Queens College Choir
James John, conductor
Text:
Three Sonnets by William Shakespeare
I. Sonnet 97
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old Decembers bareness every where!
And yet this time removed was summers time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widowd wombs after their lords decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemd to me
But hope of orphans and unfatherd fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winters near
II. Sonnet 130
My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun;
Choral is far more red than her lips red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses demaskd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
III. Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and mens eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this mans art and that mans scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heavens gate;
For thy sweet love rememberd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.