Among the statistics which WordPress suuplies me about my readers is a table of most viewed posts.  Prominent among these is my sonnet, Homage to Sonnet 138 of Shakespeare.  It’s a poetic paraphrase, in modern language, of one of the best of Shakespeare’s many sonnets.  Some people think it’s a kind of parody of the bard, but it is intended as a tribute to the immortal message of his lines, written in Elizabethan English, transcribed by me into wording that any 21st century man or woman can understand.

Another of my poems inspired by a famous past poet is Oh Be My Love and Lie with Me, which anybody who has a love of English poetry will see is inspired by The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe.

Oh be my love and lie with me
that all your beauty I can see
my hands so warm on each bare breast
as on your lips my own are pressed
and next my hands will loving roam
between your thighs, on Venus’ dome
my kisses  mark a trail of love
from shapely feet to hair above
my arms embrace your naked form
delighting in your skin so warm
your curving hips I will caress
your back and belly no whit less
so lie with me and be my love
be under me or be above
and I will celebrate in rhyme
the love for which at last it’s time!

© Malcolm Miller 2009

While clearly expressing in 21st Century language the same sentiments as given in his poem by Marlowe, mine is free of the self-censorship which Marlowe felt necessary in the Sixteenth Century.  Here is his poem:

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant poises,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds’s swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Christopher Marlowe 1599

In no way does my poem mock or parody Marlowe’s one, even though the theme is similar.  What I am saying is that it is OK for a poet to be inspired by another’s work, and to be creative with some of the ideas expressed by another writer.