Ode to a computer game

In 1993, I was in eleventh grade at school, and the theme for that year’s Come Out festival was Medieval.

At these festivals (which are sort of fairs for schools that take place every two years) students take part in costume parades and perform other activities for an audience based around that year’s theme. Every class also runs a food stall.

In 1993 my grade eleven class all dressed up as monks, and read Elizabethan poetry that we had composed in preparation for the event. The poetry was to be a sonnet, but we were not taught the proper rhyming scheme for Shakespearian sonnets. It had to be in Elizabethan English, and it had to be a love poem for an inanimate object. Here’s mine.

What power did I feel when first I saw thee
In a package of designs which I cannot compare
With any other brightness?
Nay, not torch nor lamp nor sunlight
Nor any other beauty that I see.
What relief it was to see that something of thy kind
Could rise so high above the rest and stretch my mind
And all experience it hath had of knowing beauty.
How it paineth me to think of any other lovely thing on Earth!
I cannot do it; thou doth hold me in thy power.
I cannot help but coming back to play thee -
And so good thou art to play, computer game;
Thy graphics, sound and story all combined.
And how smoothly things do scroll across the screen
When thou art there. No other shall I ever love the same.