Sonnet 33, full many a glorious morning

The sonnets of William Shakespeare were published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, in a collection of 154 poems. Sonnet 33 turns a sunrise and a passing cloud into a picture of friendship. The order of the poems in the 1609 printing is the only one we have. Project Gutenberg carries the whole sequence.

Where this text comes fromThe sun in this sonnet has a face, an eye and a temperament, and the entire opening is built on holding that one comparison steady while the weather changes underneath it. Sonnets are machines for turning an image at a fixed point, usually after eight lines, and what you copy here is exactly those eight: the flattery, the gilding, the kissing of pale streams, and then the basest clouds riding across the same face. The turn comes in the line after the fragment ends. The 1609 printing is the only text of these poems anyone has.

What you might not noticeThe eight lines you type are a single sentence with no full stop in it. The sun flatters, kisses and gilds, then permits the clouds to ride over its own face, and the sentence closes on a colon that hands the argument to the second half of the sonnet. Source

What it trainsFour commas, one semicolon and a closing colon in 338 characters, and no full stop anywhere: the eight lines are one sentence that hands over rather than ends. Only the colon needs Shift, and it shares a key with the semicolon, so the little finger works the same key twice, once with Shift and once without. Nine capitals, seven of them opening verse lines rather than sentences. One sentence of fifty-seven words. No word passes ten letters, so what this passage tests is reach rather than spelling.

Read the full text at the publisher: Project Gutenberg