The Sun Rises, The Sun Sets!

About this poem

The Oscars: They evoke drama, tragedy, comedy, live theatre! A cacophony of actors and actresses in festive parade, strutting up and down a catwalk; a personification of the persona personified! All of this pompous ceremony reminds us only too well that, as Shakespeare’s character, Jacques, utters as a monologue in Act II, Scene VII, of the play , As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players;/The have their exits and their entrances. ” As Shakespeare’s Jacques informs us so eloquently, the world indeed is like a glamorous stage show, and all of us are merely actors or, even less diplomatically, puppets of the master puppeteer of life. The three lines of this haiku poem are a paraphrase of the first three lines of the Jacques monologue. The poem’s title, “The Sun Rises, The Sun Sets!” serves as an exclamation point, an umbrella amplification of the entire message of the poem, observing how fleeting is life’s glory; here today , gone tomorrow. more »