Plan B Forum

When I in dreams behold thy fairest shade

Whose shade in dreams doth wake the sleeping morn

The daytime shadow of my love betray’d

Lends hideous night to dreaming’s faded form

Were painted frowns to gild mere false rebuff

Then shoulds’t my heart be patient as the sands

For nature’s smile is ornament enough

When thy gold lips unloose their drooping bands

As clouds occlude the globe’s enshrouded fears

Which can by no astron’my be assail’d

Thus, thyne appearance tears in atmospheres

No fond perceptions nor no gaze unveils

Disperse the clouds which banish light from thee

For no tears be true, until we truly see


More here...

Dreadful - no soul at all. Bloody machines. And what is this supposed to mean:

Thus, thyne appearance tears in atmospheres
No fond perceptions nor no gaze unveils

Is that 'tears' as in 'rips apart'? Makes no sense. Or is it 'tears' as in "weeping"? If so, it is a sin to have tears in front of 'atmospheres' - too much tumpty tumpty tumpty tum.

Also, pace Shakespeare, "nor no" sounds like a pet name for a teddy bear.

B+ but could do better

Maggie

That's some bad Shakespeare. That it is bad Shakespeare made by a (guided) machine barely raises it to the level of a party trick. But the real deal doesn't miss:

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.

And speaking of comparisons:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


And this perhaps my favorite, for all of us old liars:

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

Dude gets right to it. After 400 years, still the gold standard.

MajGenl.Meade wrote:Dreadful - no soul at all. Bloody machines. And what is this supposed to mean:

Thus, thyne appearance tears in atmospheres
No fond perceptions nor no gaze unveils

Is that 'tears' as in 'rips apart'? Makes no sense. Or is it 'tears' as in "weeping"? If so, it is a sin to have tears in front of 'atmospheres' - too much tumpty tumpty tumpty tum.

Also, pace Shakespeare, "nor no" sounds like a pet name for a teddy bear.

B+ but could do better

Maggie

Wow, a Leonard Cohen fan complaining about badly written prose that makes no sense....

Coming up in our next segment ladies and gentlemen, we have an Andrew Dice Clay fan bemoaning misogynist humor....

er, it ain't prose - it's poetree. Unless of course you are referring to "Beautiful Losers" or "The Favourite Game" both of which were brilliantly written. Now in poearty, LC is of course the master of the word, the commander of syntax and other forms of sin. Consider this, which nor no machine could gaze unveil:

WARNING
from Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956)

If your neighbour disappears
O if your neighbour disappears
The quiet man who raked his lawn
The girl who always took the sun

Never mention it to your wife
Never say at dinnertime
Whatever happened to that man
Who used to rake his lawn

Never say to your daughter
As you’re walking home from church
Funny thing about that girl
I haven’t seen her for a month

And if your son says to you
Nobody lives next door
They’ve all gone away
Send him to bed with no supper

Because it can spread, it can spread
And one fine evening coming home
Your wife and daughter and son
They’ll have caught the idea and will be gone