‘they that have pow’r to hurt’

Writing is re-writing (as Brian Moore said) and reading is re-reading. Nothing proves this more than Shakespeare’s sonnets. Here is Sonnet 94:

They that have pow’r to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they must do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow-
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flow’r is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flow’r with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Now try reading it aloud several times. It makes more and more sense.

You will have your own understanding; for me it is about the power of lovers and the power of kings; the danger of both. It begins with the blunt truth: power can hurt people. But it also says that power can be restrained, maybe cold, but just! Then, it shifts and whispers darkly about betrayal, or at least disappointment.

Poetry at full power. We must read it.

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