I've got a little black book (@Occams_Beard‪)‬ Occams_Beard

For this reading I am going to read two poems the first is typical of the period and the second for comparison is by Shakespeare.

I will pass no judgment but let you decide which you prefer.



My ladies hair

By Bartholomew Griffin. Published 1596 



My Lady's hair is threads of beaten gold;

  Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen;

Her eyes the brightest stars the heavens hold;

  Her cheeks, red roses, such as seld have been;

Her pretty lips of red vermilion dye;

  Her hand of ivory the purest white;

Her blush AURORA, or the morning sky.

  Her breast displays two silver fountains bright;

The spheres, her voice; her grace, the Graces three;   

  Her body is the saint that I adore;

Her smiles and favours, sweet as honey be.

  Her feet, fair THETIS praiseth evermore.

But Ah, the worst and last is yet behind :

For of a griffon she doth bear the mind!



Sonnet 130 - My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

William Shakespeare



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 damasked, 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.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:



For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see:



Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.



   Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

   For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

   For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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.

Touch

Iva Hotko



You feel me

Not in the light of day

Or in the summers rain

But in the depths of your being

Where you hide all

That is not to be seen

I tickle you mind

I scratch on your heart

I'm retracing your steps

Lost in time

From the shadows of you soul

I speak to you

From the deepest of your desire

I comfort you

From this dance of passion and despair

We lustfully take all that we can

You hide from the truth

Which you laid so bare for me to see

And yet you are begging me

to set you free.