Modern-Day Shakespeare

I wrote this song for my wife, my best friend, and the person whose beauty I could never adequately capture with ordinary words. The song began as a challenge to myself. I wanted to see if I could write in a Shakespearean-like fashion, taking on the language, imagery, and poetic weight of another era. I posed the question, then managed to write only two lines: "What words would part these lips If but a poet's tongue were mine of thee?" And then I could go no further. That question became the real beginning of the song. If I could not find the words myself, where would I find them? So I began searching the words that came before me. I returned to Shakespeare, and the works of other poets, dissecting their finest lines and searching for the language that might be worthy of what I wanted to say. But the more I searched, the more I realized their words fell short. That eventually brought me to Sonnet 18 and its comparison to a summer's day. It made me realize that I would never compare my wife to something like that. Not because it is not beautiful, but because it fades. Seasons pass, beauty changes, and even the things that seem eternal eventually have an end. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to compare her to anything at all. What began as a challenge to write like the poets before me became a search for words none of them had quite found, nor could even I. Perhaps that is what this song ultimately is: my attempt to describe a beauty too extraordinary for comparison, and to give poetry to the depth of what I feel for you, even knowing that no collection of words could ever quite contain it. For my wife, my best friend, and the woman who left me searching for a language worthy of her.