Students started the final series of poems in our poetry unit, turning to the poems of William Shakespeare in preparation for the next unit, which is on Romeo and Juliet.  We began parsing Shakespeare’s twenty-ninth sonnet:

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 thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is a particularly challenging piece with which to begin because it is one single sentence. We began by creating our own version of such a sentence, which in fact has an introductory subordinate clause with lots of other phrases connected to it.