In the cold reading, read aloud, but not loud, softly for yourself alone. Sense immediately who the target is. Read slowly. Phrase by phrase. Sensitive to each word, its meaning (pause, wait for the comprehension to be complete), and feel its emotional load. Pause much until the meaning is felt. Glance ahead at the punctuation, comma pauses, question marks, colons for points to come. But all phrases requiring a pause are not punctuated. Dramatize the content of words somewhat: "rough winds", "too hot the eye", and notice transitions of moods and intent.
Convey the sonnet structure: 14 lines; iambic pentameter (5 [pentameter] pairs of unstressed-stressed [iambic, rising inflection] syllables per line; rhyme scheme; rhymed couplet in last two lines becomes a succinct summary.
Become the poet, the messenger. Try it.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[ . . . ] these rebel powers that thee array;
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
(Last updated on June 16, 2006 )