Parsat

What joy is there for me, who lives alone, The sole survivor of my family line? I lift my gaze to blackened night and moan That I have none to share from what is mine. The sparrow roosts, her nest has long been made, The swallow sleeps besides her chicks and mate, But as for me, my prayers start to fade, A pilgrim heart no longer seems my fate. But still I keep the cross before my eyes, Insisting that my hands stay stretching forth In purity, awaiting sunlit skies To light my path towards him who is my worth. He is my stay and true inheritance, Of hope fulfilled my greatest evidence.

What joy is there for me, who lives alone, The sole survivor of my family line? I lift my gaze to blackened night and moan That I have none to share from what is mine. The sparrow roosts, her nest has long been made, The swallow sleeps besides her chicks and mate, But as for me, my prayers start to fade, A pilgrim heart no longer seems my fate. But still I keep the cross before my eyes, Insisting that my hands stay stretching forth In purity, awaiting sunlit skies To light my path towards him who is my worth. He is my stay and true inheritance, Of hope fulfilled my greatest evidence.

It’s been a long time since I wrote A piece with muse in mind, And longer still last time I wrote Verse of the common kind. This lilting rhythm formerly Was fully my mainstay, But now it’s rusty as a tune That I no longer play. Why have I turned back to my youth, To meters from before? Why have the iambs rearranged In ways I can’t ignore? I found my heart in loneliness Could only speak in prose, But only verse could properly My true feelings expose. It's been a long time since I wrote Verse of the common kind, But now a new muse has arrived To free the heart confined!

This is an index of the different collections that comprise The Cycle, a series of sonnets I have written that start with a line from one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Most of these are collections of sonnets, but a few particularly beautiful and impactful sonnets became tetralogies, in which I used four lines from the sonnet to make four different sonnets in a "miniseries" of sorts. These are laid out in order. Kindle Sonnets (Op. 20): Covers sonnets 1-17. These all have the distinction of being written as notes in my first edition Kindle, which I got when I entered college. This series also starts with an original prologue, which I suppose could double as a prologue for The Cycle as a whole. Summer Tetralogy (Op. 15): Four sonnets based on sonnet 18, the famous "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" A deep dive into romance. Like Only a Few Days (Op. 21): Covers sonnets 19-33, but skipping 29. This set of 14 sonnets is dedicated to my future wife, with the number 14 inspired by the

I long to be the messenger of spring outside your window, tapping on your panes to tell you outdoor winds have lost their sting and winter's poured its final chilly rains. how bright the blossoms right outside your door, how sweet the sound of singing on your street! what would it take to beckon you and lure you by my side, to personally meet? how can I chase away the little foxes that nibble at the vineyards of your mind and leave you with anxieties obnoxious, with self-doubts both untrue and most unkind? just say the word and I will open chase with stagg'ring speed and much-abounding grace.

a part of me might wish that you were hale and hardy, full of youthful dynamism, able to cross this junction's summer vale not by the eagles' wings, but heroism. but if you were so strong, then you would cease to live by grace. you would not be the kind whose mercy seeks to set the poor at peace and loves the weak who have been left behind. that I could give the vigor I possess so that your dreams would not be further sidelined, that your whole self might not be in distress, oh how I hate that you've been thus confined! the trust by which you live, I must learn too, which lives with limits and does not push through.

I think of that last summer that we shared, Before I ventured out into an unknown coast And you to mansions personally prepared, The goldeness of life turned to a ghost: All twenty-one of our years, then distilled So rich, complex, complete to taste, Was finally uncorked. And we were thrilled Our joys and pains had never gone to waste: A sweet relief, if all too very brief.

VI. Sarah And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. The multitude like sand upon the shore Began as an impossibility, A phantasm, a prayer, nothing more Than infinite improbability. We started as a laugh made tangible, A joy absurd now given flesh and bone: A couple once thought unexpandable Was made into our household's cornerstone. And we who share in kinship, in the breaking Of natural laws to deal in miracles, We find that new reality forsaking The old lines that split saints and criminals. We are the ones who glimpse the kingdom here, The rescued, now the blessers who can peer.

Op. 33, no. 1 The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, These were the substance of my youthful days Which I spent searching for my destined ways While in the company of much-beloved peers. For though my growing-up held hardship, fears, And griefs, which often felt a tangled maze, A word from hard-fought friends, a turn of phrase Could fill my heart with all their charms and cheers. Indeed, it's friendship that kept me alive; Both honesty and solidarity, Critique and comfort succored me to thrive. They lessened not life's great severity But gave me grace to rise, and hope to strive... These kindred hearts, my chief prosperity!