Looking back a few years to studying Literature in college, I remember being forced to read some of the most mind-numbingly boring prose and poetry. But it wasn't all bad, 'cause I actually did enjoy some of the stuff (yes, Shakespeare included!). One poem I personally thought was particularly nice is this one:
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,Okay, before people start screaming and demanding what's wrong with me, let me just say that like everyone else (impossible as it may seem) I too have a softer and more sensitive side *nod nod* which comes to the fore occasionally. Now, allow me to reassert my usual safe, calculating self by presenting the following:
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: "All here in one bed lay."
She is all states, and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy 's we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.
- John Donne