Page 42 of The Two Wills

“The important thing is,” he began, “it’s time for you and Rose to make peace. It’s not a horse race, lad, nor a wrestling match. Make friends. And no more grand dudgeons during practice. I’m depending on you to help fashion our Juliet. I need you at your best.”

I nodded, though my face reddened. He had completely ignored what I had said. “I will do as you say, sir,” I said, surrendering, and pivoted to leave.

“Wait,” he called out. I turned, and I could see my own melancholy reflected in his eyes. Once more he searched for words, but then stopped himself, and I could see that there were two Wills battling inside him. One who wanted to stop my heart from hurting with a lie, and the other who wanted to speak something truer. Each was a block to the other. Finally, unable to speak the jumble inside his head, he pulled a scroll from his jerkin pocket and handed it to me. “I wrote this the other day. I wasn’t going to give it to you yet, but—”

“Is it a new scene for Juliet?”

“No. It’s a sonnet.”

My voice turned cold. “Another poem about me needing to marry and make babies? I told you you’re wasting your—”

“No,” he said. “Just read it. It’s different. Show it to no one.”

Then, appearing anxious, he left without another word.

I unwound the scroll and pulled it to the light of the fire to read what the Poet wrote.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I caught my breath and then read the poem two more times. This time his verse did not bid me marry nor procreate but rather spoke of how his words—the ones in the poems and his plays—would make me live forever. This surely is a love poem of sorts, isn’t it?

Once more, my heart pumped longing throughout my veins. I hid the scroll down my shirt, as if I were secreting that fairy infant that the Poet and I had conceived in my dreams. This poem was my proof that I had not gone mad, nor would I surrender my pursuit.

EighteenNothing Like the Sun

Wherein Mistress Rose Williams reads a sonnet the Poet has written for her.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;