(Sipping Sonnet: Snack-sized Retellings)

The Poet’s in a delicious dilemma. His heart is at war with his eyes: who gets the fortune of his Beloved’s sight? The Poet’s a mere bystander – collateral damage.

The eye blocks the heart’s view of the Beloved. The heart retaliates, revoking the eye’s free will.

The heart says it’s within him that the Beloved resides – a treasure locked and walled away from the eye’s piercing gaze. Secretly, though, the heart craves a glimpse of the Beloved.

The eye denies. True beauty lies in the crystal lens of the eye. Without it, the Beloved will fade into a blur – a figment floating in the ether. Behind the curtain, though, the eye aches to feel the Beloved’s warmth.

Neither shows any sign of backing down. A legal battle for title ensues. A tribunal empanelled by thoughts is set up. Their verdict will decide the fate of eye’s share and the heart’s part.

And so it’s decided: the eye gets the Beloved’s outward beauty; the heart gets her soul.
But its the Beloved who wins them all.

Sonnet 46 by William Shakespeare

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.

My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierc’d with crystal eyes,
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.

To ’cide this title is impanneled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye’s moiety and the dear heart’s part:

As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part,
And my heart’s right thy inward love of heart.