I Love Poetry

I love Poetry. My favorites are Shakespeare and Robert Frost. In my office at work I cut out several of my favorite poems and stuck them on the wall behind me. I get Shakespeare lines and poems stuck in my head the way you get a song stuck in your head. I just keep reciting it either out loud or in my mind. It is so fun to say them out loud though when they flow so well. I remember being a 16 year old lifeguard sitting at the top of the slide at Sunsplash quoting Shakespeare while I waited for people to come to the slide. Then I always had to say "feet first, lay back, hands behind your head GO." I even had a rhythm to that because I said it so often. Anyways, I think I will take a few entries for a few days to share some of my favorites.

These first two are Sonnets from Shakespeare. I thought it was cool that he stressed the importance of having children. There are lots of selfish people these days who could benefit from hearing these words. I don't think they apply to those (like me) who are trying to have children and have not been successful.

IX
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That in himself such murd'rous shame commits.

Those words are so beautiful and so powerful to me. He also has a line about the importance of having children in Twelfth Night when Viola says to Olivia "Lady, you are the crull'st she alive, if you will lead these graces to the grave and leave the world no copy."

III
Look in the glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thu dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.

I think it is sad when people choose to remain single and childless. Who is there to witness your life and care about you? You may have wonderful parents and friends and that is great, but it is no replacement for a marriage and a family. I have heard people say they feel sorry for those that have to take care of children, but what happens when they get old? When they have traveled the world and used the money they had because they didn't "waste" it on children. What happens when their health fails and they can't do the fun things they can afford to do? When they enter their Golden years with no grand children and no one to take care of them, or visit them who isn't paid to do so. My heart goes out to those who truly want families, but for some reason can't, but to those who can and won't I feel even sorrier for. Not anger, not judgement, just pity. There is nothing more wonderful than a family, and nothing this world has to offer can replace the joy of a happy marriage and home. I thank God for my sweet husband and hope that will be blessed with children of our own. Thank you Shakespeare for expressing my feelings in such a beautiful way.