Sonnenzio on a line from Shakespeare

Sonnenzio on a line from Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
for the sun, in all its brilliance, could not compare
with the beauty that radiates transparently from within her soul
cutting a wide swathe through whatever area she may tread

The old mare that I keep about the house
and trot out with great fanfare for social events
her eyes are worn and she has grown weary
people still stare, but for all the wrong reasons

but what good are the traits of my mistress
if they are not shared with the world at large
from the waterways of Laredo to the mountains of Katahdin
the stares that she draws are tallied

She is a rare treat, I know,  for a man my age
there are many that dream of walking on this stage

The sonnenizio was invented in Florence in the thirteenth century by Vanni Fucci as an irreverent form whose subject was usually the impossibility of everlasting love.  Dante retaliated by putting Fucci into the seven chasm of the Inferno as a thief.  Originally composed in hedecasyllabics, the sonnenizio gradually moved away from metrical constraints and began to tackle a wider variety of subject matter.  The sonnenizio is fourteen lines.  It opens with a line from someone else's sonnet, repeats a word from that line in each succeeding line of the poem, and closes with a rhymed couplet.