Those of you who loved Colin Firth's brilliant performance in Michael Winterbottom's film 'Genova' -generally overlooked by prevailing negative reviews- will surely remember the closing scene from the summer course in English literature the professor played by Firth delivers at Università degli Studi di Genova. That scene with the beautiful sonnet and the 'you can get away with anything' line. Well for those of you who did not have the chance of learning it by heart at school here is the sonnet (incidentally by Shakespeare):
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
(source -and further masterpieces: http://mural.uv.es/tmara/sonnets.htm)
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