Sonnets
Twelve sonnets by Shakespeare. Every letter here is a bird with a body and weight. It keeps its distance, flies like its seven nearest neighbours and dodges collisions in advance. A falcon circles above the page, and the pictures are obstacles.
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About these sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems, first published in 1609. Each is written in iambic pentameter and rhymes abab cdcd efef gg: three quatrains and a closing couplet1. Twelve of them are here, among them LXXIII about bare boughs where birds sang not long ago, and XXIX about the lark at break of day.
Things to try on this page:
- links — their letters fly in their own colour;
- bold letters are heavier and slower, italics behave like regular text;
- pictures are obstacles: the horde flows around them, the flock flies around them;
- rules, table borders and list markers stay in place;
- the type-size scale below the preface — from tiny letters to giants two and four times the heading.
- Press 2: the flock takes off in a wave from the cursor.
- Sweep the cursor through the flock: alarm runs through it as a wave.
- Press 3 and lower “Zombie view range” in the settings.
1 This form is known as the Shakespearean, or English, sonnet.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. — Sonnet XVIII
| Sonnet | Opening | Birds |
|---|---|---|
| LXXIII | That time of year… | sang, now silent |
| XXIX | When, in disgrace… | the lark |
| XCVII | How like a winter… | fallen silent |
| XVIII | Shall I compare… | none |
Type-size scale
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
The last line of Sonnet XVIII: each word is larger than the one before, from 0.2 to 4 times the heading size. Mass grows with a letter's area, so giants take the longest to speed up and push the small ones aside.
