Daily Archives: December 8, 2006

Dec 8

Just Say It Out Loud

It’d be fun to have an entry with a part that must be read aloud.  So, you know, I say, "Why not now?"  Your first task is to read this poem outloud:

If Women Could Be Fair

    IF women could be fair and yet not fond,          
    Or that their love were firm, not fickle still,
    I would not marvel that they make men bond,
    By service long to purchase their good will.
    But when I see how frail those creatures are,
    I muse that men forget themselves so far.

    To mark the choice they make and how they change,
    How oft from Phoebus they do fly to Pan,
    Unsettled still, like haggards wild they range,
    These gentle birds that fly from man to man;
    Who would not scorn, and shake them from the fist,
    And let them fly, fair fools, which way they list?

    Yet for disport we fawn and flatter both,
    To pass the time when nothing else can please;
    And train them to our lure with subtle oath
    Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease;
    And then we say, when we their fancy try,
    To play with fools, oh, what a fool was I!

And then this one:

Sigh no More

    Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
    Men were deceivers ever;
    One foot in sea, and one on shore,
    To one thing constant never.
    Then sigh not so,
    But let them go,
    And be you blith and bonny,
    Converting all your sounds of woe
    Into Hey nonny, nonny.

    Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
    Of dumps so dull and heavy;
    The fraud of men was ever so,
    Since summer first was leavy.
    Then sigh not so,
    But let them go,
    And be you blith and bonny,
    Converting all your sounds of woe
    Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Same author?

 

I keep reading the first one and hearing a lesser poet, too many words when fewer would serve, a man tangled in the rhyme scheme instead of toying with it.  But I wonder if that’s my bias, knowing it’s Ed who wrote the first and Will the second.

Still, how often is that argument fought out over and over, that Ed was Will because Will could not possibly have been?  And I wonder, do these folks making that argument not read both poets?  Can they not hear one ponder where the other plays?

Or is that just my own bias?  Rooting for the kid from the countryside? 

 

Dec 8

I Secretly Like the Orange Cat

When we first got the orange cat he was so tiny that his tail stuck straight out behind him like a pointing finger, always alerting us to where he’d just come from.  And then he went through an awkward time in his juvenile stage where his body was so much bigger than his head that it was hilarious.


My dad, who never dances, even made up a midget cat dance to do whenever he saw the orange cat.


But as a grown cat, he pleases me, the color of marmalade, and big but not too big.


He’s got the most seductive belly ever.  He stretches out and there it is all yellow and fluffy and I can never resist reaching over and rubbing it, even though there’s little he hates more.