Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
Briunt Norton

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

I'm taking a week off.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Sonnet no 117: By William Shakespeare "That I have hoisted sail to all the winds"

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Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds
And given to time your own dear-purchased right
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my wilfulness and errors down
And on just proof surmise accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate;
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Sonnet no 116: By William Shakespeare "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Sonnet no 115: By William Shakespeare "Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings"

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Those lines that I before have writ do lie,.
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Sonnet no 114: By William Shakespeare 'Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?'

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Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you,
Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?
Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchemy,
To make of monsters and things indigest
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best,
As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
O,'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup:
If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Sonnet no 113: By William Shakespeare "My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue."

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Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch:
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature:
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Sonnet no 112: By William Shakespeare . "Your love and pity doth the impression fill"

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. Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
. Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
. So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
. To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
. None else to me, nor I to none alive,
. That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
. In so profound abysm I throw all care
. Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
. To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
. That all the world besides methinks y'are dead.