Shakespeare 400
My favorite sonnet has especially relevant themes today, on the 400th anniversary of his death in 1616. In Sonnet 81, he talks about how his writing will carry his legacy far beyond the decaying remnants of his being. That, no matter how much of Shakespeare's real life we lose to time, the lives he wrote in his works will live on to be his monument. Over 400 years before we existed, he imagined our eyes reading his pages and our tongues speaking his words.
81 Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead; You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen) Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.