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:

LXV



Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o\'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O! how shall summer\'s honey breath hold out,

Against the wrackful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time\'s best jewel from Time\'s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

  O! none, unless this miracle have might,

  That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

 	--William Shakespeare

CXLIV



Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman colour\'d ill.

To win me soon to hell, my female evil,

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turn\'d fiend,

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another\'s hell:

  Yet this shall I ne\'er know, but live in doubt, 

  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

 	--William Shakespeare

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

Women at that time were supposed to look pretty and throw little
handkerchiefs around... well, I couldn\'t play that role.
Louise Nevelson