20 May 2026

· On Sonnets Day 2026, eighty is the new forty ·

Imagine Sonnet 2 from its own extended far end, looking back at middle age rather than ahead to it.

Sonnet 2 (or here)

Sonnets Day, 20 May, commemorates the date in 1609 when Thomas Thorpe registered SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS with the Stationers’ Company, ahead of its publication. Having become an ever-living poet (that is, a dead one) five years earlier, I was unavailable for the press tour.

Other sonnets posts

• 2025: Sonnet 159: Morbidity. I didn’t publish #160, but #159 fits with #161/2B. I need a new category. Fair Youth, Dark Lady, Unfair Dotage?

• 2022: Sonnet 157: Not Household Words. Many of the new words I introduced in my work are still used every day. I thought I’d write a sonnet with some of the ones that aren’t.

• 2019: Sonnets Day. 410 years after the registration of the quarto SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, I write briefly about them, and offer a friend’s useful definition.

VERO NIHIL VERIUS
VERITAS OMNIA VINCIT