When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless . . .
—John Milton, Sonnet 19 (ca. 1652)
But who would credit that, that one talent
dug from the claggy Beauce and returned to it
with love, honour, suchlike bitter fruit.
—Geoffrey Hill, The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy (1983)
Why should that talent be death to conceal
and compared fruit returned bitter
as love and honor? We once used to say:
“It’s no big deal!” Talent noted, love, honor
that much the sweeter when returned,
I must recuse—albeit no way a quitter—
treat love and honor as two simple rights
that do not necessarily need be earned.
Emerging into light, I never asked for honor
or love, but took them as my due
for being there—and quenching rage at you.
“Eighty percent of life is just showing up,” said
Woody Allen, but he would find it not enough
—much more is asked for on Housekeeping Night.
Note: The epigraphs to this sonnet are discussed in Eleanor Cook’s intriguing book Against Coercion: Games Poets Play (Stanford University Press, 1998), chapter 7, from which I borrow them. Disclosure: Professor Cook graciously acknowledges in it, inter alia, “my splendid copyeditor, Peter Dreyer, master of griffin history and much more” (vii).
Google attributes the aphorism "Eighty percent of success is showing up" to "Donkey Hotey" (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/10/showing-up/).
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