Author: SearchLightSoul (---.ipt.aol.com)
Date: 12-10-01 10:59
The former post was removed because it was off topic, and thus a violation of our Great Books & Classics spirit. We are migrating to
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You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his
tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you
understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send
signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there
is no cat. --Albert Einstein
XCIII
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love\'s face
May still seem love to me, though alter\'d new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many\'s looks, the false heart\'s history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate\'er thy thoughts, or thy heart\'s workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
How like Eve\'s apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!
XCIV
They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven\'s graces,
And husband nature\'s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer\'s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself, it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.
--William Shakespeare
XXIII
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength\'s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love\'s rite,
And in mine own love\'s strength seem to decay,
O\'ercharg\'d with burthen of mine own love\'s might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express\'d.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love\'s fine wit.
--William Shakespeare
Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. Lewis, A preface to Paradise Lost