Bored.

Am posting coz i'm bored... laptop is now defragging... hopefully after defrag less laggy. Since there were no viruses or spyware or adware after all the scanning... my diagnosis was that my hard drive was too crammed... so... hv to defrag it for now. Can't play music or any audio coz of the lag while defragging. Strictly speaking i'm supposed to actually leave it alone while it does its work... but i guess i can use the internet since it doesn't actually utilise the hard-drive much... right?

Doing abit of reading since there's nth much to do.

Shakespeare Sonnet 2

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

Summarised and modernised version for better understanding:

Who will believe my poem in the far future

If it was written full of praise about your beauty.

Even though heaven knows

That it will not even tell us about half of all you are.

If I could describe the beauty of your eyes

And list everything good about you,

In future there will be readers who say: "The poem is not true

Because such heavenly beauty has never existed"

In the far future

Readers will laugh at my poem

And your true beauty will be known as a writer's exaggeration

That is stretched far from the truth

But if you have a child that lives in this age and time,

Then your beauty will live twice more after your death.

In the child, and in my poem.

Shakespeare Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.

Modernised version:

Not even stone or golden statues of princes

Can outlive this poem of mine

But you shall shine more brightly in my poem

Than stone which will become dirty and unswept in time

When wars overturn statues

And tree roots destroy stones

Even the God of War, his sword nor the fire of wars

Shall destroy this poem, which is the living record of your memory.

Against death and all other enemies,

You will live on, this poem will still exist

In the eyes of all the people

Who live until the end of the world

So until judgement day,

You will continue living in this poem, and every lover's eyes.

Is it strange for someone like me to be reading these 400 yr old love poems? haha... Mrs Poretti's literature lessons have kinda affected me a little... but i do think Shakespeare's Sonnets are darn right cool...(even if historians claim that he's gay) especially since what they say come true... about the poem surviving after death and wars... and in it the lover's beauty remains.

Might sound cheesy, but if someone were to write a sonnet to me... i'd totally fall for it... unless it was sent in email... this sort of stuff works better hand-written right... Unfortunately this form of romance is almost entirely extinct in modern times... haha... super mushy rite?

Had fun translating this poems into understandable english... i go bath now... Shakespeare has put me in a gd mood.... heheh!