Featured Poem: Sonnet 59 by William Shakespeare

Today's Featured Poem is brought to you by Jamie Barton our Business and Content Manager at The Reader. She reads 'Sonnet 59' by William Shakespeare. This poem looks at the idea of originality and explores whether this concept can stand the test of time.

Sonnet 59

If there be nothing new, but that which is  
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd, 
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss  
The second burthen of a former child!  
O, that record could with a backward look, 
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,  
Show me your image in some antique book,  
Since mind at first in character was done!  
That I might see what the old world could say  
To this composed wonder of your frame;  
Whether we are mended, or whe'r better they, 
Or whether revolution be the same.  
O! sure I am, the wits of former days  
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

William Shakespeare