The former post was off topic and was removed as it was a violation of our
Great Books spirit.

These forums are being phased out & replaced. Join us at our new
registration-only forums at:

jollyrogerwest.com Great Books forums,
Philosophy Forums,
and booksliterature.com Great Books forums.

Please respect that these are Great Books sites. We far prefer
discussions along the following
lines:

LXVIII



Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,

When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,

Before these bastard signs of fair were born,

Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

Before the golden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,

To live a second life on second head;

Ere beauty\'s dead fleece made another gay: 

In him those holy antique hours are seen,

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of another\'s green,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;

  And him as for a map doth Nature store,

  To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXXX



O! how I faint when I of you do write,

Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,

And in the praise thereof spends all his might,

To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!

But since your worth--wide as the ocean is,--

The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,

My saucy bark, inferior far to his,

On your broad main doth wilfully appear.

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,

Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;

Or, being wrack\'d, I am a worthless boat,

He of tall building, and of goodly pride:

  Then if he thrive and I be cast away,

  The worst was this,--my love was my decay.

 	--William Shakespeare

XLIV



If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

Injurious distance should not stop my way;

For then despite of space I would be brought,

From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.

No matter then although my foot did stand

Upon the farthest earth remov\'d from thee;

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,

As soon as think the place where he would be.

But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,

To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

But that so much of earth and water wrought,

I must attend, time\'s leisure with my moan;

  Receiving nought by elements so slow

  But heavy tears, badges of either\'s woe.

 	--William Shakespeare

One had to cram all this stuff into one\'s mind for the examinations,
whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on
me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the
consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire
year. --Albert Einstein