Sonnet for Minimalists
by Mona Van Duyn

From a new peony,
my last anthem,
a squirrel in glee
broke the budded stem.
I thought, Where is joy
without fresh bloom,
that old hearts' ploy
to mask the tomb?

Then a volunteer
stalk sprung from sour
bird-drop this year
burst in frantic flower.

The world's perverse,
but it could be worse.

Time for a dose of Milton

Sonnet 18
by John Milton (1608-1674)

Avenge O Lord thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our Fathers worship’t Stocks and Stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy Sheep, and in their antient Fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that roll’d
Mother with Infant down the Rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubl’d to the Hills, and they
To Heav’n. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow
O’er all th’Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian wo.