haven't updated since the first essay of term on the late roman empire (yes i know it is a very sad way of marking the passage of time, by counting the essays you do) but 5 essays later i am already at medieval byzantium and this term's been passing immensely quickly. concert was last week (sibelius symphony no. 2 and schumann's konzertstuck), hwachong nite was 2 weeks ago (cf. serene's blog), CNY 3 weeks ago, etc. but anyway it's been passing fast and now i am on the verge of an essay crisis.

so what am i doing blogging here? i don't really know, since byzantium's a really interesting topic, and my essay is due tomorrow. but while skimming through the pages of whittow's pugnaciously revisionist history (The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600-1025) i come across the scribblings of another bored undergraduate historian. copied out at the end of the chapter regarding the initial islamic conquests of byzantine territory in the 7th century was the bard's sonnet CXVI, prefaced with the pencilled words: beautiful. How relevant? and in another hand: Not at all.

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. 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 its height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though its rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with its 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.

- W. Shakespeare

simple and moving - three-quarters of it consists of monosyllabic words - nothing quite so fancy and baroque. yet, yes, i think it beautiful too.

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i shall blog about more serious stuff another time :P