Lord Denney's Players has announced the winners of its third annual sonnet contest. Congratulations to Nicholas Orzo, who won all three prizes this year!

• First Prize: "The Sacred Garden" by Nicholas Orzo
• Second Prize: "Too Soon" by Nicholas Orzo
• Honorable Mention: "A Little Bird" by Nicholas Orzo

Each year, LDP partners with the Department of English and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies to invite Ohio State undergraduates from all colleges and majors to submit individual Shakespearean sonnets. Winning sonnets earn $100 for first place, $50 for second place and $25 for honorable mention.

"The Sacred Garden" by Nicholas Orzo

The altar’s flames lick the proffered tributes, 
Consume their flesh, and wash them to the bone;
Fire flickers, tulips blossom, budding fruits 
Erupt and stumble, backwards they are done. 
There is no flame. Along the walk is dark. 
Hedges tower in their robes and pronounce 
Solemnity through murmured breaths. The lark 
Sings absence; owls scoff; doves denounce.
A new flame burns. The moon consults its scales. 
The thousand eyes cast spotlight on the bench, 
Where lovers lay as passion mutely pales,
And each declares the others innocence.
The gavel falls, no jury to delay;
The moon condemns the lovers to the day.

"Too Soon" by Nicholas Orzo

I feel the reaching hand of death appears
To drag me back; my furrowed heels cannot 
Repay the inevitable’s arrears,
So I must trace the path that debt has bought.
I turn, and, in a shrouded mist, he stares–
A lamplight fog diffuse and coolly dark
Clothes the visitation, but what he wears
Most visibly, that crooked, pearly mark
Of defiance and confidence, always
Certain he is end, the start, the boundless.
In each measured step, the soul’s center frays
To fragments in the deep, huddled, soundless 
Frontier. No eyes. No tongue. No hands. The theft:
I did not know I had already left.

"A Little Bird" by Nicholas Orzo

A little bird once sang to me (at least
I’ll say it did), addressed me in a crowd
And signed its melody (its work increased
Through authorship). It sang to me aloud,
So I could not pair voice with the singer,
Since hundreds plagued the creaking branch, whose weight 
Pounded percussion in every finger
That held a little bird. One (second-rate)
Raised up a note, which fell so flat and dull;
Another (amateur) played through a scale,
Which wheeled (un-feathery) around my skull,
Descended with my ears. I would not quail
Before I found the plucky, lovely heart.
Without a name, its song is only art.