This post was removed because it was off topic. Soon we will be migrating to
registration-only
forums at jollyrogerwest.com Great Books forums and booksliterature.com Great Books forums. These are Great Books sites, and we prefer posts such as:

XVIII



Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd: 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXX



That thou art blam'd shall not be thy defect,

For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater being woo'd of time;

For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days

Either not assail'd, or victor being charg'd;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,

To tie up envy, evermore enlarg'd,

  If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show,

  Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

 	--William Shakespeare