...the books, the arts, the academes that show, contain and nourish all the world...

Prometheus Carrying Fire, by Jan Cossiers

I fell in love (ptp) with Biron's speech from Love's Labour's Lost (3 L's, 2 apostrophe's) when I first saw Kenneth Branagh's musical adaptation of the Shakespeare play. Although, when I watch it now, Branagh seems to slaughter it somewhat with over-sincerity (is there such a thing, and can I believe, if there were, a man capable of it?), I must confess it was he who made me love the speech in the first place.

Perhaps this merely reflects how one's tastes can change.

This speech also sparked my interest in Prometheus himself, who you can find out more about here. He's the god who (amongst other things) brought humans fire against the wishes of Zeus. He was severely punished for it by being tied to a rock for eternity. In addition to this, his liver was picked out by a bird over the course of each day (leading many to suppose that the Greeks knew of the liver's ability to regenerate). Overnight, he would heal, and the following (groundhog, but worse) day it would all happen again.

Those gods really knew how to punish. None of this sentenced to life and out again in five years malarky.

As I plan to be rustically courting (and make of that what you will) a rugged islander at this very moment, I thought this speech might bring me extra luck. How can you say I'm not a romantic? Just because I prefer my romance in the form of mutual blood-letting does not make it less authentic.

Biron: But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockl'd snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair:
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.