OK, this should have appeared on April 1, but since we are still Fools, I guess I can go on and post it. The 'work' originally came about as a comment to my wife's post on Philosophy and Aesthetics: Actant Art: the 'je-ne-sais quoi' as a 'notarikon'. As I have no doubt as to what I prefer, I cast the following 'sonnet' as the taunt of an aesthete to a philosopher:
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
Hold in perfection but a little moment.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast.
Such civil war is in my love and hate.
O! Change thy thought, that I may change my mind,
Plod dully on, to bear that weight in me.
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made,
Yet do they steal sweet hours from love's delight.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end -
Haply I think on thee, and then my state.
Note how the aesthete is preoccupied with beauty rather than honour and titles, and exhorts the philosopher to 'change thy thought'. The aesthete ends with a transcendent leap, 'like to lark at break of day arising', soaring above the heavy philosopher and disappearing in sheer heavenward bliss...
Of course, the 'sonnet' doesn't rhyme, and the sense it makes is quite fortuitous, for I coupled it together from lines from at least 10 different Shakespeare sonnets, plucking lines almost at random... Why? Read the first letter of each line as a vertical word, as one would in a primitive notariqon, and you will instantly see what I really think of philosophy!
All in good fun... of course. Camelia quite justly responded with a truly Shakespearean insult, calling me a paunchy plume-plucked puttock!
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