The former post was off topic and was thus removed as it was a violation of our
Great Books & Classics spirit. We are migrating to
registration-only forums at href=http://jollyrogerwest.com>jollyrogerwest.com Great Books forums,
Philosophy Forums,
and booksliterature.com Great Books forums.

Please respect that these are Great Books sites, and we prefer posts along the following
lines:

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we
should like to stretch out over the whole of time. -Albert Camus

LXXVIII



So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,

And found such fair assistance in my verse

As every alien pen hath got my use

And under thee their poesy disperse.

Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing

And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,

Have added feathers to the learned\'s wing

And given grace a double majesty.

Yet be most proud of that which I compile,

Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:

In others\' works thou dost but mend the style,

And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;

  But thou art all my art, and dost advance

  As high as learning, my rude ignorance.

 	--William Shakespeare

CXIV



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.

 	--William Shakespeare

CII



My love is strengthen\'d, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear;

That love is merchandiz\'d, whose rich esteeming,

The owner\'s tongue doth publish every where.

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays;

As Philomel in summer\'s front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

  Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:

  Because I would not dull you with my song.

 	--William Shakespeare