Shakespeare's Birthday

It's the 443rd birthday (and also deathday) of a remarkable mind.

Also the day Miguel de Cervantes died. Those were years when giants walked the earth.

Here is Sonnet 98, a springtime poem with the chill whiff of mortality from which Shakespeare seldom strayed far. I particularly like the odd use of a colon at the end of this poem; a wonderfully open-ended ending, as if he would go on. I could not find a different version, so I guess this is the punctuation he intended.

SONNET 98

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play:

Love and Memory

I've been tearing my hair out trying to write my first real syllabus for my first college teaching gig. English 101 of course. See, I placed out of that. Which means I am so smart that I actually still don't know basic composition. Now I'll have to learn. I think it will be good for me. My poor students...

Anyway. I was looking for my favorite quote about writing, to inspire my students or at least make them laugh:

“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

I found out it was written by the eminently quotable newsman Gene Fowler. And I also found this resonant loveliness:

"Love and memory last and will so endure till the game is called because of darkness."

Hard to believe the same hardboiled journalist wrote that. The beauty of that sentence stopped me cold. Almost made me want to run to my journal and rub together two of my own sentences.

Almost.