Friday, April 12, 2013

So Long as Men Can Breathe



The man of hundred-masks is thought to be
A hundred men, so large his soul, too large
It seems for such a simple body to
Contain: a hundred souls in just one man.

A bygone poet come again, a king,
A peerage made of learned men, a queen,
A peer, by king or queen a bastard born--
A kingly soul must have a lordly name.

The hoity-toity cannot brook to vaunt
A swain, a simple country boy, and grant
The epithet "the bard", that highest rank,
So gladly, to a lowborn glover's son.

Yet we all live by bread and get the pall:
Great men are greatly born, where'er begot;
He was himself and in himself contained
A hundred men: for all of time. Amen.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 by David Gilmour

I just wanted to share this:



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,        5
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 owest;        10
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.