Late Sunday thoughts - maybe Monday

I've spent tonight watching the Shakespeare Retold DVD, and was knocked over, particularly, by Much Ado About Nothing. Damien Lewis is one of my favourite actors due to Band of Brothers anyway, but he's just brilliant in Much Ado... especially. And there's a scene between his character (Benedict) and Beatrice (played by Sarah Parish) the night before he has to give the best-man's speech at his friend's wedding, and he's decided to read a Sonnet instead of a typical best-man's speech. And he chose Sonnet 116. And he wants Beatrice to help him understand the Sonnet better so they read it together and she explains it to him and yada yada yada. But the Sonnet just stood out, massively. It smacked me in the face. You've (who?) already read it no doubt, but it just smacked me and I wanted to pop it on here. So I will do:

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Paraphrase of SONNET 116
I don't believe in any barriers to the union between true lovers.
Love isn't really love if it changes when we notice our beloved has changed.
Love doesn't vary when someone tries to lure us away from our beloved.
No way! Love is like a rock, and storms can't undermine it.
Love is a constant guide to us as we sail through life,
But we can't really see its true value even if we can quantify love somehow.
Love doesn't vary with time, even if the glow of youthfulness passes from our beloved's face.
Love doesn't vary because of time; it stays constant even until death.
If I'm wrong about this, then I never wrote anything and nobody has been in love.

I also remembered this poem. It's the one from Four Weddings and a Funeral. And it's just stunning. So so stunning. So here this is too:

Stop All The Clocks

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I know it was written by a man for a man, don't read any form of homesexual desires into it, but it is so heartbreaking and beautiful. It's the kind of thing I have this stupid image of my wife reading out at my funeral in however-many years time.

And then I also found this. I love this. It says so much so well...

An extract from Captain Corelli's Mandolin

"Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those who truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from the branches they find that they are one tree and not two."

I wish that I could write one thing even a 10th of the beauty of those. Sometimes it can be so frustrating. But then my inability makes me grateful that other people were able to. Because it helps me. And I hope it helps you.

Praise the LORD that he gifted other people to do those things 'eh?!