For My Muse

My paltry prose is always read by you and what life its flame contains was fanned by your encouragement. So in the midst of all my poor attempts at punditry I take this opportunity to diverge from my regular line of postings and make this trifling offering to you. May your love for me be requited a hundredfold and may God's grace be forever yours. When I think of you I feel like Shakespeare must have felt when he penned sonnet #29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For my sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.