Text of poem
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared 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 rememb’red not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
Recorded on site and in one take in the Uinta National Forest up at about 6500 ft of elevation, just up the road from my house. The sun was shining, the orange-crowned warblers were singing.
This poem is another of Shakespeare’s procreation sonnets (and there’s still a number left to go), but this one is doing some interesting things with what it means to be a man (and a woman). Why is the woman nothing more than a field to be tilled in one line, and in another she is the model of the handsome young man? Is Shakespeare a creepy sexist or not? For sure he’s objectifying women, but according to Shakespeare do they play a contributing role or are they just functional?
This is always a fun poem to talk about with students, because they have feelings about like “unbless some mother” or “disdains the tillage of thy husbandry.” And then they get confused and worked up about “thou art thy mother’s glass”—and for good reason. It’s confusing! Some students find this process very frustrating, but then I can see some others start to light up, and when they can crack open a poem and start to see how it works, they glow a little: something that was opaque before is not at least partially comprehensible.
One of my goals in teaching poetry is to get them to slow down, pay attention, and to think deeply about what’s on the page. It’s a difficult skill for young people today, mostly because the world of social media is opposed to slowing down, opposed to paying attention, and opposed to thinking deeply. A hot take on a poem is almost always going to be wrong, or if not wrong, it’s so superficial that it might as well be wrong.
Even though I’ve taught poems for years and years, I still will find something that I didn’t understand or I didn’t see before. And then I’ll be embarrassed: how many students did I corrupt with my only partial understanding? Who am I to be teaching? On good days I realize that my newly-enlightened state is still only partial, and that I’ll surely find something new in the future that will make today’s reading look superficial and immature. And on and on.
Did you get just a little out of today’s poem? Is it making you think? If so, it’s doing its job, and you’re doing yours. Good work, all of us.
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