Light Showers

I Longed to Live

A Shakespearean Sonnet*

When I was young, too young to yet be wise,
I read of the Hellenic golden mean;
Extremes in life were sin, by that surmise.
I longed to live in calm and die serene,
And so I struck a balance in my ways
And never dared to fall and never flew.
I walked along the midline of my days
In measured steps. I did the best I knew.
But somehow in the twilight that was time
And never used to yield to dawn or dark,
I learned there's little life in pantomime.
The irony was strong, the truth was stark:
Of all excesses in this rash creation,
The worst of all is excess moderation.

*All sonnets consist of fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter. In Shakespearean sonnets, the rhyme scheme is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. The final couplet should state the heart or climax of the Shakespearean sonnet.