Happy Birthday, Will!

Today is William Shakespeare's birthday - or the day we universally accept as his birthday, anyway. The man who added over 2000 words to the language, who poked and prodded words until they bent his way, the man some felt couldn't write well because he ignored Aristotle's Unities of Time, Place and Action...

Happy 449th Birthday!

In honor of the master of iambic pentameter, today I set down a challenge:

Write fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.

That's it! You can choose the sonnet form, if you're feeling especially adventurous, but I'd be happy with fourteen lines of blank verse (that means it doesn't even have to rhyme!).

So say a happy birthday to the Bard
and use iambic syllables to start.
That's five of them, remember, in each line;
the stressed and unstressed side-by-side, you see?

The form is easy, sounds like spoken speech;
Start off the beat, then hit it hard to make
the words important bear the heavy load.
Come on and do it, I have faith in you!

You still are here? A' reading on this blog
when you should be writing on your own?
Hop to! Hop to! Away! Away! Get on
With you. Go write your opus, write your rhymes!
The day's a'wastin', the sun'll set too soon!
Go write your lines before the rise of moon.

Ha! I did it! Whee!!!! :)  Your turn now! Put 'em in the comments if'n you will. Too much fun not to!

Diana