# Newsletters > Shakespeare's Sonnet-a-Day >  Sonnet #78

## Admin

Sonnet #78

LXXVIII.

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
And found such fair assistance in my verse
As every alien pen hath got my use
And under thee their poesy disperse.
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly
Have added feathers to the learned's wing
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine and born of thee:
In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
But thou art all my art and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance.

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## wagnernn

I've a problem of reading Shakespeare:song words are very old and I can't understand.How can I solve this problem?

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## aswelch

> I've a problem of reading Shakespeare:song words are very old and I can't understand.How can I solve this problem?


Look up the words. I have access to the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). You may not because it is pretty expensive to have a subscription to it online. At any rate, this dictionary gives the history of words and how they have been used. That is often the problem with Shakespeare. If you can't find a definition that makes sense to you maybe you could post about it here and others can help you out!

Also the words themselves might not be the trouble so much as the syntax. I really encourage you to post and ask any questions. Maybe you can really gain something from the interaction.

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## bunker_70

The way I do it (for dutch literature) is having lots of different dictionary's that go back way in time. I look it up in the dictionary printed in the time the text was written. Cant do that for all languages tough ^^

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## sreeja

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets thin iambic pentameter, a technical term for a poetry pate lines in tern in which each line has 10 syllables, beginning with an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable, followed by another pair of unstressed and stressed syllables, and so on–until there are five pairs of syllables To understand iambic pentameter, you first need to understand the term ''iamb.'' An iamb is a unit of rhythm consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The words ''annoy,'' ''fulfill,'' ''pretend,'' ''regard,'' and ''serene'' are all iambs because the first syllable of each word is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed accented Iambs may consist of a final unstressed syllable of one word followed by an initial stressed syllable of the next word. The following line from Romeo and Juliet demonstrates the use of iambs.

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