Shakespeare

As I stated yesterday, Shakespeare inspires me. He inspires me to command my language better and expands my paradigms on the meaning of individual words and sometimes phrases.

This is my favorite of his sonnets. It's talks about true beauty. It talks about how "beauty" is made truly beautiful for the truth, integrity, and for me I read transparency into it as well.

This the kind of beauty I strive and desire to possess...that sweet ornament which truth doth give.


SONNET 54

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
   And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
   When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

--William Shakespeare

(Day 25)