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Nightlight

@shen-chan

In the darkest of nights, I write.
Anonymous asked:

Stumbled across your art recently, and I totally admire your work! As a complete noob to the digital art scene, I'd just like to ask whether you have any tips on colour picking (like for skin tones, under varied/dramatic lighting and such!). I have a ton of other things I want to ask, but I'll limit myself to one question and then try to google the rest, haha/ Thanks for sharing your art with us! ^^

ahh thank you so much! ♥ welcome to the digial art scene friend, i hope you enjoy your stay and ctrl + z

now onto your question! (if you don’t know what layer and layer modes are and how they generally work you should probably google that before you continue reading)

we all perceive colour differently (thx science) and i trust my intuition a lot when it comes to colour picking because of that, and also because i feel like you can make pretty much every colour combination work within the right context. context is key! but still, remember that all of this is about how i perceive colour, so you might not agree with everything i say.

here’s a quick rundown of terms you’ll see around a lot in reference to colours and shading: the hue, which is the ‘colour’ itself, the saturation aka the intensity, and the brightness [or value] which describes how dark or bright we perceive a colour to be.

rule of thumb: when you shade don’t just add black (or white) to your base colours, that will make your drawings boring and lifeless. use different hues and saturation!

now first things first: which skin colour does the character have?

you’ll mostly be navigating in the red to yellow spectrum for the skin tone. so when i pick the base colours i usually start with the skin and adjust the rest of the colours accordingly. if you’re not sure where to begin it might help if you first determine the values (brightness) of the base colours in grayscale.

and here are a few colour variations—i stuck to the approximate values but played around with a lot of different hues and levels of saturation.

now compare 3 and 5: you’ll notice that 3 is very bright and leans towards orange hues, whereas 5 has a pinkish tint.

on the left i gave 5 the hair colour of 3 and in my opinion the pink hue of the skin doesn’t go well with the orange undertone of the hair. you’ll have to experiment a lot to find out which combinations work for you.  

ctrl + u is your biggest friend (or image >> adjustments >> hue/saturation in photoshop, the shortcut works in sai and clip studio paint too). play with the sliders and see what happens. i do that a lot myself, because it’s easier to coordinate the colours like that afterwards instead of trying to manually pick perfectly matching ones right away.

for further adjustments i like to use an extra semi-transparent layer on top of everything with just a single colour to add atmospheric light. this unifies the colours and makes them more harmonious, if that’s what you’re looking for. this is about as far as i’d go if i didn’t want to shade the drawing.

if i do want to shade, especially with high contrasts and dramatic light, i darken the base by just adding an additional black layer, here set to 40% opacity. of course you could add a colour layer like the ones i mentioned previously too.

to create an impression of dramatic light you need a high contrast between light and dark areas (1). if i want additional visual intrest i often add secondary light which falls onto the main shadow areas. here i picked a faint greenish blue to balance out the yellow (2). and since light is at least partially reflected when it hits a surface you should add a faint glow that goes across the shadow/light border (3).

for this shading style i like to use the layer mode colour dodge with lowered opacity + fill settings. for some layer modes opacity and fill do the exact same thing (e.g. for multiply or screen). however for colour dodge there’s a big difference:

a lowered opacity merely alters the transparency of the entire layer. that looks pretty awful sometimes, because the bright orange affects the dark of the hair much more intensely than the already brighter skin. but when you lower the fill percentage you primarily lower the amount of light that falls onto darker colours. so the layer’s opacity setting treats every colour equally whereas the fill setting takes their values into consideration. it might be hard to understand if you don’t try it out yourself, so just play around to get a feel for how it works!

and to summarise, here’s a process gif:

colour is an extremely big topic and i’ve only barely scratched the surface but i hope that still helped you out a little! the fastest way to learn is always to try things yourself, so grab a sketch and experiment. 👍

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Sorry for such a long post, but - I sketched up my interpretations/headcanons of the (human [alive]) Straw Hats’ body types and had a lot of fun with it!

I LOVE THIS I LOVE THIS and i will never shut up about it

reblog and make a wish! this was removed from tumbrl due to “violating one or more of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines”, but since my wish came true the first time, I’m putting it back. :)

OH MY FUCKING GOD, IT’S BACK ON MY DASH.

THIS SHIT WORKS OKAY, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.

The last time I saw this on my dash, I didn’t think it would happen, so jokingly I wished I could go to a fun. concert.

AND GUESS WHAT, I WENT TO A FUCKING FUN. CONCERT.

THIS SHIT WORKS, TRY IT.

YOOOOOOO

I SAW THIS ON MY DASH THE OTHER DAY AND THOUGHT “ITS WORTH A TRY” SO I WISHED I COULD GET A 3DS

LITERALLY LIKE 4 DAYS LATER MY DAD SENT ME A PICTURE OF THE 3DS XL HE BOUGHT FOR ME WHILE I WAS AT SCHOOL

IM STILL FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS

holy fuck, I didn’t expect this to work, I was like psh, whatever it’s just a quick reblog, but I wished my Dad would actually respond back to me AND HE FUCKING DID A FEW DAYS LATER, I GOT A FUCKING TEXT FROM MY DAD TODAY WHO HASN’T SPOKEN OR RESPONDED TO ME IN MONTHS HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS MAGIC IT WORKS. 

I WANTED TO SEE MY BOYFRIEND AND I DIDN’T THINK I’D GET DAYS OFF BUT THIS WEEKEND I’M HEADING UP THERE??? THIS IS CRAZY SHIT 

SO LIKE I JOKINGLY WISHED FOR MY OWN LEN KAGAMINE AND THEN LIKE A WEEK LATER I GOT A LEN NENDOROID??? H ELP

WTF OKAY SO THIS SHOT ACTUALLY WORKS BECAUSE WHEN I WISHED, I HAD WISHED MY CRUSH WOULD LIKE ME BACK AND GUESS WHAT? I HAVE A BOYFRIEND NOW. WHAT THE HELLLLL?????

ok I’ve said this before but IM DOING IT AGAIN THE FIRST TIME I SAW THIS, MY WISH DID COME TRUE SO I REBLOGED AGAIN AND SAID IT IN THE TAGS BUT THEN I WISHED FOR SMTH ELSE AND IT LITERALLY LITERALLY HAPPENED LIKE A COUPLE DAYS LATER WHAT THE HELL SO NOW IM WRITING THIS HERE FOR YOU BC I DONT BELIEVE IN THIS CRAP BUT STILL IT’S AN AWFULLY BIG COINCIDENCE

THE BOY I FELL I LOVE WITH LEFT TO TRAVEL THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD AND HAS BEEN GONE NOW FOR 3 MONTHS. WE HAVENT SPOKEN SINCE BECAUSE I DIDNT WANT TO MAKE HIM FEEL TRAPPED TO ME AND NOT ENJOY HIS TIME SO I WAITED FOR HIM TO CONTACT ME FIRST. I SAW THIS ON A PARTICULARLY LOW DAY WHEN I WAS MISSING HIM SO MUCH I CRIED FROM THE PAIN, GUYS I REALLY LOVE HIM, SO I THOUGHT MEH WHAT THE FUCK, AND WISHED HE WOULD JUST LET ME KNOW HE WAS OKAY.

GUYS.

HE FUCKING CALLED ME 20 MINUTES LATER

20 FUCKNG. MINUTES. LATER.

GOOD THINGS DO HAPPEN. AND ITS IN THIS POST.

I wish for someone to leave something in my ask.

OKAY SO I ASKED FOR A HEDGEHOG AND NOW GUESS WHO HAS A PET HEDGEHOG

I WISHED FOR SNK MERCH THE FIRST TIME. I GOT A JACKET.

I WISHED FOR MY GIRLFRIEND THE SECOND TIME. I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND.

THIS WORKs I WISHED I WAS MOVING TO NORTH CAROLINA AND GUESS WHAT GUYS IM MOVING TO NC IN AUGUST I PROMISE U IM NOT LYING

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guys ok ur probably thinking that this is all just bs right? WELL I THOUGHT SO TOO BUT I WISHED MY CRUSH WOULD CHAT ME AND HE DID AND IM FREAKING OUT not even kidding i swear on my grampas grave this works

I love this it always works for me yey thank u shooting star :’)

woah the notes let’s hope my wish comes true

Lily’s “Cute” Fic Recs

An anon asked if I had any good or cute fic recs and, well… I ended up with quite the list! It’s largely 2jae fluff, but there are a variety of ships and ratings included below, and you should all go and read these wonderful stories! 

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watching youngjae sing is so incredibly therapeutic. i lov my pumpkin so much and here are some clips of youngjae doing what he loves the most (besides jaebum):

Things to bring back in books:

  • Chapter titles
  • Actually having a synopsis on the back instead of reviews no one will read

Some excellent additions from the notes:

  • Maps
  • Indexes of characters and places with pronunciations
  • Numbering books in a series on the spine
  • Tables of contents

bravest

Dumbledore never thought the fall from the Astronomy Tower would have taken so long and he thought he knew everything about the castle he lived in for the most part of his life. This was his choice, rarely anything happened to Albus that wasn’t his choice, he somehow always had an upper hand on life, calculating every move meticulously and making sure no one knew how prepared for anything the life may throw his way. 

When his body hit the floor he opened his eyes slowly, checking his surroundings to figure out where he might have ended up at. This wasn’t some illusion, he was dead, this wasn’t Hogwarts but somewhere completely different where he could hear people mumbling. He straightened himself up and got up with the agility of a man his age normally wouldn’t have.

YOU,” shouted a woman in the distance, her hair was still glowing like fire and she was walking to him fast with two man behind him trying to hold her back. “I TRUSTED YOU”

“Lily, please,” pleaded Albus. “Can we talk about this calmly?”

“Calmly??” yelled Lily, her green eyes were drowning in the tears trying to leave. “Are you even aware of the burden you have loaded on Severus? Let alone my son who is just a child.”

“Severus accepted–”

Accepted?” she interrupted throwing her hands up in disbelief. “He said he didn’t want to do this and you made him kill you, in front of Harry.”

She was shaking so much, a beautiful disaster almost, her eyes creating new wounds on Albus’ already fragile skin and making him wish he had ended up in hell instead of here.

“It had to be done for–”

The greater good.” completed Sirius, a disappointed look on his face rather than anger. Albus had kept him locked of for so long but he had to but he had forgotten how handsome the disowned heir of Black house was before he went to Azkaban. “What difference do you have from Grindelwald if you are doing the same things he had done?”

“It’s not the same thing Mr. Black and you know it.”

“I know nothing anymore Professor,” objected Sirius as he ran his hand through his hair. “I thought I knew everything up until two years ago, I thought I knew you too but things change I guess and don’t call me Mr. Black again… please.”

No one talked for a while as Sirius took Lily away to calm her down a little bit, tears streaming down her face as she watched Harry fight everyone who tried to take him away from where Dumbledore’s lifeless body was. James opened his mouth every few minutes to break the silence but he couldn’t do it.

“Do you know how devastated he was?” he asked finally, his voice breaking a little. “Do you know Bill got attacked by Greyback? Do you know Harry tried to do something so bad to Snape because you made a monster of him?”

“James, I never thought I would see the day you worry about Severus.”

“No, no, no,” mumbled James his eyes gleaming with the fury he was trying so hard to keep at bay. “Don’t confuse my worry about my son with my worry about Snape. The way you are straying away from the subject, I think you don’t know shit, Professor.”

“I have made sure to leave a plan behind for Tom’s defeat,” explained Dumbledore, his fingers intertwined and his gaze on the ring he still was wearing. “These weren’t some momentary decisions, I had known I had to die for a good while, sometimes you have to sacrifice–”

“Don’t you dare talk about sacrifice in front of Lily,” shouted James, Dumbledore had finally pushed him off of the edge he was trying to hold onto. “All three of us sacrificed ourselves, too, you are not the only one who tried to do something for–”

“The greater good,” whispered Sirius as he walked back and forth. “You raised him like a pig for slaughter for the greater good?”

“I tried my best to be there for him, there are things you can’t possibly understand,” began Dumbledore his fingers rubbing the burnt skin. 

“If you had been there for him, I would still be alive you know,” said Sirius his voice breaking down in the middle of his sentence. “If you had been there for me as you promised when we joined the Order, I would still be whole.”

“I’m sorry Sirius that you–” he took a deep breath before staring to talk again. “I’m sorry that this happened to you but that was on all of us.”

“If you had been there for him Snape wouldn’t have made his life a living hell,” countered James. “He took his revenge out of my son, not me, my son and you just couldn’t say no to him because he was your Queen in your chess game where you were the King and Harry was nothing more than a stupid pawn.”

“Harry isn’t in the middle of the war because I put him there, Sybill made a prophecy about–”

“You know damn well prophecies don’t have to be carried out!” shouted Sirius, his grey eyes not so pale anymore but burning with anger. “You could have prevented so many things Albus, this could have gone so differently.”

Lily came back slowly from where she was, walked past James and stood right in front of Albus, her tears dried on her face and her eyes determined to hurt the shell of a man standing in front of her.

“You just love to make sure you are not the only one feeling guilty don’t you? Because how else could you have borne leaving Harry at that house?” said Lily, she was visibly calmed down but her disappointment was visible on every inch of her pale skin. “You left him to rot saying that it was the only way he could live, that’s not a reason good enough for me to leave my son in an abusive household Professor. You may have sacrificed yourself as you have sacrificed all of the pawns in your game but I will never forgive you for what you have done to me, my family. My Harry.”

“Harry was never yours to sacrifice,” continued James as he threw his arm over Lily’s shoulders, hugging her tightly. “I didn’t die for my son to become a soldier in someone else’s war, Sirius didn’t die so you can continue taking advantage of him and Lily didn’t sacrifice herself even though she could have ran away just so he can die at the hands of Voldemort again. Your plan, Professor, is flawed beyond belief and you are the only one who thinks it will work perfectly.”

“You are a coward, Professor and I always thought you were one of the bravest man I have ever met.”

Albus Dumbledore had been called many names before but it had been years since he had been called a coward, it was safe to say he was scared of the word even since Aberforth looked him in the eye at Ariana’s funeral and said it.

Coward.

Albus would be the first to admit when he did something wrong, he wasn’t perfect and he knew it. Wizarding World however, ever since he had defeated Gellert, thought that he couldn’t make any mistakes. Tom Riddle had pushed him to make mistakes, sometimes to get to the better days you had to go through the darkest of times and he didn’t expect Sirius, James or Lily to understand that.

When he was left to his own thoughts, Albus had thought about all the mistakes he had made in his life, it was a long list for someone who was thought to be a hero of some sort, he was Harry’s hero although for one he hadn’t seen something coming. The more he thought about it the more he felt the weight of the responsibility on his shoulders. The boy he had raised to be a soldier say him as his hero, not knowing half the things he had done. Would Harry have seen him the same if he had known about Ariana? Would he still think Albus was brave if he had known his fate? Harry was a selfless boy, what would have happened if Albus never kept secrets from him?

Albus looked at the trio standing far away from him and decided it was best if he had stayed away for the time being because the more he thought about it, he understood why they were so angry. Harry trusted him and he had broken his trust by not trusting him enough to tell him everything but he had to. Albus had to keep this a secret for everything to work out how he planned them to.

It had to be Severus who killed him, this way he would get the complete trust of Tom and feed him false information. When the time came Snape had to make sure Order didn’t understand he was a spy for them and Harry, well Harry had to die. The moment he had survived the first killing curse, it was certain that Harry was meant for great things but now Albus didn’t know if dying was a great thing to do for a 17 year old child as Lily kept reminding but someone had to make the decisions that were hard to make for others, someone had to do the harder thing but he was a coward after all. 

A coward who had to be the villain in the end to make sure the real villain was defeated. Albus Dumbledore never referred to him as a hero or a brave men, he never was, he hadn’t been brave with Gellert so he was determined not to make the same mistake he did because he was too blind to see back then, this time whatever it took, it wasn’t going to take more lives than it should. He hadn’t been brave with Ariana, he couldn’t save her from herself or the people around her. He wasn’t brave when it came to Sirius, he wasn’t brave when it came to Remus either, he wasn’t brave when it came to the people who he cared about because he was scared.

However Harry, he was brave, he was one of the bravest people Dumbledore had met and that was saying something. He had taken the risk of assuming that Harry would willingly sacrifice himself to save the people he loved and he knew that he was right. Albus was nothing compared to what Harry was, at least that was how he felt as the tall boy insisted he would be the one to do the blood sacrifice in the cave or when he insisted on defeating Voldemort when this wasn’t his war to fight.  

Albus was hell-bent on not having another mistake in his life and if it meant being a coward he was fine with it because he knew deep inside that everything would work out, just fine and it was alright that Sirius, James and Lily didn’t understand just yet, he had to live with the hatred he now know he deserved for a while, at least until the war was over.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward. - George Bernard Shaw

Today’s International Self-Injury Awareness Day, so I wanted to make something. All alternatives are taken from this post, go there for more!

Remember that I love you, and I’m here for you. Please be safe.

It’s not Self-Injury Awareness day as of the time I am reblogging this, but this is still a GREAT resource! 

-Kelsi

@evinfinite (I don’t know if I already tagged you into this-) @saltyirishpotato2002 @love-life-and-randomness @EVERYONE ELSE

Tips like these helped me in the past, I hope they can help someone else now!

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Mingyu’s little things: a thread
  1. Let’s start with these I C O N I C lines, quality English only:

“I lobeu my CARATdeul. Do you know it?”

We know it Mingyu, we know

2. He sneezes, A L O T

According to Mingyu, he has Rhinitis. That’s why he breathes with his mouth sometimes and is constantly sneezing.

Why bother using tissue while you have the other member instead?

  • Jun’s face is priceless:
  • Sneezed and then gently rubbed on Vernon’s clothes:
  • Straight into fetus Seokmin’s shoulder:
  • That moment when you need to sneeze, but you can’t:
“ACHOO NICE!!”

3. Clumsy! Gyu

pRotEcT

  • Seriously this boy…
  • In his own world

4. Let’s not forget sexy GyuGyu:

  • Gyu wrecking everyone’s bias list

Good To Me = the death of all Mingyu stan

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  • And this Meanie legendary headbutt

Happy Birthday to the sweet and kind soul, to the giant puppy of SEVENTEEN! Thank you for always putting a smile on CARAT face just by being yourself. Your smile and laughter never fails to make us happy. Thank you for being so gentle and amazing to all of us!

May you continue to be happy, always.

Happy Birthday, Kim Mingyu 💎

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Hey unpopular opinion but while the “the curtains are just fucking blue” meme is funny and all, sometimes writers use symbolism and sometimes the curtains are not just fucking blue sometimes specification of colors means something because sometimes writers think about adding depth and nuance to their work and maybe you should at some point think that art can have meaning and not everything should be taken at literal face value

Hi, friendly neighborhood english major here. the important thing when looking for symbolism are patterns: repeated elements, binaries, anomalies. Are a whole lot of things blue? The curtains, the car, the main character’s bedroom walls, the pattern on the plates, the love interest’s eyes? That’s starting to become a repeated element. Binaries? Are all those things blue but put in opposition to the red fire and the red blood and the red rose etc? That’s a binary. Does the blue window with the blue curtain have a bright yellow tulip sitting on the sill? That’s an anomaly.

These are all interesting things to pay attention to in an author’s work. The next important thing to ask is why is the author calling my attention to these colors? What function does coloring these items serve?

Maybe the author just likes blue.  But if blue things keep turning up all over the place, there’s a chance that it’s not a coincidence, and the color is serving a purpose in the story.

I applaud this addition thank you

you know what really hit me about thanks is that ,,, the instrumental really perfectly describes seventeen. they literally started from nothing. cheol was in the company when tempest was supposed to be a thing and jihoon just wanted to make music. hansol was the kid who was always different and he stopped school because he wanted to create instead of just being someone. seungkwan is a small town boy with big dreams. above all, soonyoung just wanted to dance. minghao was the kid who barely spoke korean when he started training. junhui was the kid with the set future, the one who was in one of china’s top schools and played piano and was excellent in every field he was in. wonwoo was quiet and silent and yet he did so much for the people he really cared about. mingyu was the pretty boy who everyone often thought wouldn’t amount to anything. seokmin was the main vocal who always got sidelined, the kid who just wanted to sing. jisoo moved from america and the only thing he had that reminded him of his life in america was probably the guitar he had, and he just wanted to sing. jeonghan was the picture perfect kid who dreamed with his eyes open and treasured his music above anything else and anyone else. chan was so damn young when he started training and he gave all the things normal kids have, like friends and free time, because he had a vision and a dream and he knew exactly where he wanted to be. the thirteen of them were always dreamers. they dreamed, they hoped, and most importantly, they followed through.

so think of seventeen who started from nothing. from the green practice room and the swinging guitar and the emo haircuts. from the constant delays and named t-shirts. from the pod-casts and lives. from 17 project. so think of the thirteen of them. seungcheol, the leader, doe eyed and always ready to help. jeonghan, the sharp-eyed, witty hyung who always knew what to say. jisoo, warm, smiling, careful, reserved (and once upon a time, homesick before he became) settled. junhui, music at his fingertips and love in his voice and a million untold stories in his eyes. soonyoung, who tells his stories with the way he closes his eyes when he dances, who tells his stories with his body and all of him. wonwoo, misunderstood, heart warm, every heartbeat dedicated to running and running behind who he wanted to be as a child. jihoon, music in the way he spoke, music in him when he did anything, who breathed music and thought about music all the time, who loved and treasured seventeen above everything else. minghao, going from struggling in korean to openly speaking what he wanted to, who is so shy and yet so much more, who smiles at everyone, who makes us smile. mingyu, tall, clumsy, handsome, but above all, who broke down all the barriers that stood between him and his dream, who bypassed all the criticism to become a role model for so many of us. seokmin, sunshine in his eyes, sunshine in his smile, sunshine in his voice, who always looked at us with so much fondness and love whenever he could, who always expressed himself so beautifully with his words. seungkwan, who never wants us to have a bad day, who always tells us to look after ourselves and loves us so wholeheartedly and fully and makes us laugh even if we don’t want to. hansol, the kid who grew up so much from his experiences, who is so quiet and so reserved and yet so wild and uncontrolled and so relatable, who writes music and just wanted to create. chan, who danced and danced as a kid, chan who probably never had a significant other, chan who’s first love was his music, chan who grew up so well, chan who loves and respects his twelve brothers so much. 

and now think of where they are.

the thanks they speak of in this song is heartfelt because it’s the most unrestrained kind of thanks. it’s the wild, desperate kind of thank you. it speaks so much and so little at the same time. thank you for staying, thank you for being here, thank you for listening, thank you for believing, thank you for always trusting us, thank you for yesterday and the day before and the very first day and tomorrow and the day after and the very last day. that’s what i hear when i shut my eyes and listen to the song. it’s a thank you that’s filled with so much that it echoes in the bass and the percussion and the vocals.

so seventeen:

thank you. for everything. for the good times and the bad times. for the first time you won a music show and seungkwan started crying and couldn’t sing and the unit leaders started crying and junhui wiped jihoon’s tears. for the time you won artist of the year at the asian artists awards and you all were so pleased. for the time you saw your parents after a long time at 17 project and all of you were willing to show us how much you missed them. for one fine day and the chili paste prank and the chicken fight (and jeonghan’s hair in one fine day in japan) and the happiness you shared. for strength-coups and yoon-cheonsa. for soonyoung and seokmin’s comeback song. for bang-chan. for jeon wonwoo the bag of luck. for mingyu-sunbaenim. for “it’s gonna be lit, like these candles” and “if you don’t know who we are, please check us out”. for american line. for jisoo’s n-line poems. for minghao’s “if there is light in this world i hope it shines on you.” for my i. for highlight. for the performance unit. for the vocal unit. for the hip hop unit. for 13 + 3 + 1 = 17. for giving us so much to be happy for when some of us don’t have a reason to even be remotely happy sometimes.

thank you for just being you.

“Since I’ve had to be without your sweetest presence, I have not wished to hear or see any other human being, but as the turtle-dove, having lost its mate, perches forever on its little dried up branch, so I lament endlessly till I shall enjoy your trust again. I look about and do not find my lover — she does not comfort me even with a single word.

Indeed when I reflect on the loveliness of your most joyful speech and aspect, I am utterly depressed, for I find nothing now that I could compare with your love, sweet beyond honey and honeycomb, compared with which the brightness of gold and silver is tarnished. What more?”