There's a certain indescribable beauty to abandoned spaces. I can't get enough of them.
Sonnet 140
By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;
For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee:
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be,
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;
For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee:
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be,
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
Not sure about the first one, but I know the second one is from Zion and the third is from the Vermillion Cliffs.
Theodor Kittelsen was a famous Norwegian artist. Trolls were one of his favorite subjects.
The Amores (First thirty lines)
By PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO
I was preparing to tell about weapons and violent wars in serious
meter, with the subject being suitable for the meter.
The lower line was equal: Cupid is said to have
laughed and to have stolen away one foot.
‘Who gave you, o cruel boy, this of an authority over poetry?
We the holy poets are the crowd of the Muses, not yours.
What would happen, if Venus should seize the arms of golden Minerva,
if golden Minerva should fan the lighted torches?
Who would approve that Ceres reign in the mountain forests,
while the fields were tilled under the rule of the maiden with the quiver?
Who would equip Phoebus distinguished with hair with a sharp
spear, while Mars was strumming the Aonian lyre?
You have great, and extremely powerful kingdoms, boy:
Why do you aspire, ambitious one, to a new duty?
Or, is it yours, which is everywhere? Are the Heliconian valleys yours?
Is scarcely even Apollo’s lyre now safe for him?
When a new page has started well with the first line,
that next one humbles my strength.
And I do not have suitable material for lighter rhythms,
either a boy or a girl adorned with long locks.’
I had complained, when forthwith he freed his quiver,
selected arrows which had been made for my destruction
And strongly bent his curving bow on his knee
and he said ‘Take this, bard, as a subject for your work’
Miserable me! That boy has sure arrows:
I am on fire, and Love reigns in my once empty chest.
Let my work rise in six feet, and fall again in five.
Farewell iron wars, with your meter.
Garland your golden brow with myrtle from the sea-shore,
Muse, you must be measured through eleven feet.
By PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO
I was preparing to tell about weapons and violent wars in serious
meter, with the subject being suitable for the meter.
The lower line was equal: Cupid is said to have
laughed and to have stolen away one foot.
‘Who gave you, o cruel boy, this of an authority over poetry?
We the holy poets are the crowd of the Muses, not yours.
What would happen, if Venus should seize the arms of golden Minerva,
if golden Minerva should fan the lighted torches?
Who would approve that Ceres reign in the mountain forests,
while the fields were tilled under the rule of the maiden with the quiver?
Who would equip Phoebus distinguished with hair with a sharp
spear, while Mars was strumming the Aonian lyre?
You have great, and extremely powerful kingdoms, boy:
Why do you aspire, ambitious one, to a new duty?
Or, is it yours, which is everywhere? Are the Heliconian valleys yours?
Is scarcely even Apollo’s lyre now safe for him?
When a new page has started well with the first line,
that next one humbles my strength.
And I do not have suitable material for lighter rhythms,
either a boy or a girl adorned with long locks.’
I had complained, when forthwith he freed his quiver,
selected arrows which had been made for my destruction
And strongly bent his curving bow on his knee
and he said ‘Take this, bard, as a subject for your work’
Miserable me! That boy has sure arrows:
I am on fire, and Love reigns in my once empty chest.
Let my work rise in six feet, and fall again in five.
Farewell iron wars, with your meter.
Garland your golden brow with myrtle from the sea-shore,
Muse, you must be measured through eleven feet.