Steampunk Sonnets

Not precisely Shakespearian, but innersting nonetheless. My favorite follows, with the link to the rest after that:

Workers By Hand and Brain

At first they dug with picks, and then the great

steam drills were made. The navvies, who had carved

their way through living rock, sickened or starved

or died of bends. The bubbles percolate

to heart or brain; you die. Not soon enough,

The engineers and stokers died as well.

They might as well have tunnelled into Hell.

The bubbles came for them. Not only rough

workers by hand die at those depths; the brains

of scientists who tried to work out why

exploded too. They came back, saw the sky

and felt the pangs of death. These days the trains

are pressurized. Unharmed we make our way

from London to New York in just one day.

 

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/04/seven-steampunk-sonnets