The new Forum may be found at http://booksliterature.com/ .

The former post was removed as it violated our user agreement, or it did not add to the "Great Books" conversation in a constructive manner.

In our ongoing effort to ensure quality discussions throughout our forums, from now on only registered members may post. Spam will not be tolerated. If you would like to help moderate, please contact "jolly roger ship @ yahoo . com".

To post please register at http://jollyroger.com/greatbooksforums or at JollyRogerWest.com Great Books Forums.

We prefer Shakespearean Sonnets, reflections on Space and Time, and posts along the lines of:

XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd: 
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 	--William Shakespeare

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is our continuing goal to foster the world's greatest converstation.

In the future, please register and make all posts to http://jollyroger.com/greatbooksforums,

and/or join the forums Great Books & Philosophy Forums @ jollyrogerwest.com.

XIII

O! that you were your self; but, love you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. 
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
  O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
  You had a father: let your son say so.
 	--William Shakespeare

Best Regards,

William Einstein Shakespeare :)

XXXV

No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,--
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,--
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
  That I an accessary needs must be,
  To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
 	--William Shakespeare