Desiderius Erasmus, the great Renaissance Dutch scholar, published a rhetoric titled De Copia, or On Abundance. In it, he advocated a practice that was well-known in Classical Greece and Rome: students of rhetoric should write from abundance. They should have at their command not only many ways to develop a subject, but also many different ways of phrasing their ideas.

To demonstrate the latter, Erasmus pulled a tour-de-force. He took the ordinary statement, Your letter pleased me mightily, and invented 146 different ways of saying it. Then, to prove that practice makes a writer ever more inventive, he took another phrase, a harder one because it was "not itself particularly fertile or suggestive": Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you. He composed 201 versions.

This spring, students in an English/ Linguistics class, The Study of Style, took up Erasmus' challenge and tried writing their own versions of Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you. Working in small groups, they came up with 196 different versions in about 45 minutes. We present here, for your entertainment, a sampling of their work.

"Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you."

No more live I, no more thoughts of you.

My memory of you departs with my soul.

I will be thinking of you until I die.

As my life exists, so shall your presence remain.

As long as breath remains in my body, your image will fill my mind.

Your image in my brain forever will remain. As long as I be, your image I will see.

Your image will not be forgot till I lie in the earth and rot.

As long as my heart beats, your image is alive.

Until I die I will think of you.

Days without the thought of you will not exist.

As long as the sun shall shine, thoughts of you are mine. You will dwell in my thoughts as long as I live.

During every moment of mortal life, your memory will not perish.

Only death will erase my memory of you. Your presence will be in my head 'til I'm dead.

Until my heart stops beating, my thoughts are devoted to you.

From the sunrise to the sunset of my time, you will be in my mind.

Your memory burns in my mind until my last sunset.

Till the day I die, I'll never say good-bye.

Forever, until I cease to breathe, yours truly will recall you.

Ever, till the time I am no more, this mortal shell will bring you back to mind.

Ever on, until my pulse finishes, I wish to hold thoughts of you close.

Forever, till I transcend this world, I look forward to the picture of your face before my eyes.

The thought of you will remain in my heart forever.

For all time, until I cease to breathe, I shall remember you.

In perpetuity, as long as I exist, I shall remember you.

Memories of you will shine within my heart as long as I live.

At any time, inasmuch as I exist, I will think only on you.

Until the end of my existence, I will forget you not.

Unless I be rotting in the grave, thoughts of you I will preserve.

While I am in existence, images of you will always be captured in my mind.

I will recollect your ways until the end of my days.

I will recollect your ways until the end of my days, and that will be the death phase.

As long as breath passes my lips, you will live in my memory.

With pen in my hand, you are my word.

I'm dying to forget you.

Until it is emptied, this litter box will stink of you.

Until my 747 lands, you are my in-flight movie.

Until this marker dries up, it's your name I write.

Invariably, I recall the inevitability of you with every waking moment.

Ask not that memory of you slips through, but advances with me like age.

I will rejoice in thoughts of you until Odysseus sails home.

Thou art ad infinitum.

From this moment on your memory will light the darkness of my mind.

You will be in my brain 'til worms take your place.

I will sing your praises until the day I croak.

Until the cold earth is my bed, your image will dance in my head.

Until death comes a-knockin', my memories of you won't be a-stoppin'.

Your memory will play in the cinema of my mind until the final reel.

My head shall never lose your fragrance.

Life and you go on in me as a journey in time.

Until I turn blue, my thoughts are of you.

I will have no memory before you and no life when that memory is gone.

Your orchestra plays in my mind 'til the fat lady sings.

My mind's secret filing cabinet will never discard your file.

When the moment comes that I am worm bait, memories of you will ooze from my brain.

The memory of you will remain in the pores of my skin until this body is dust.

Fond thoughts of you will flow until this fragile vessel turns to dust.

My heart will fill with your image for as long as it fills with blood.

When my spirit ascends from my body, you descend from my mind.

When I am decomposing, thoughts of you are composing.

My memory of you will fade at the end of life like a burning thread.

Mental images come and go, but yours won't until they need a hoe.

My mind is a car, and your memory is the fuel; when I run out, no more you.

My mind is a prison cell incarcerating your memories; when I am shut down you are released.

Memories of you are candy sweet, and I hope I die before they rot my teeth.

Memories of you I'll take until the end of my rope; when the end frays, it is the end of my days.

With the coming of baldness, you will shine on my crown.

With each day's awakening, your image will rise up before me.

As long as I breathe, I smell your fragrance.

On a mountain trail, you are my aspen.

Death will be cold when the loss of your memory chills my heart.

As long as my life is framed by time, you will be in every hour's memory.

You will be the light bulb in the attic of my head.

Always, through this veil of tears, I see your face.

As trees remember their rings, your imprint stays put in me.

You have written on my life with a permanent marker.

I am commas and dashes you are my period.

On a blank piece of paper: "You Are."

As the sun goes down, your shadows grow longer.

In the heart of the night, you're a very full moon.

Let the hand forget its arm if ever I forget you.

Nobody can erase your memory from the blackboard of my mind.

In the endless mirrors I see you and me in infinity.

As long as I breathe, you are my oxygen.

When my candle goes out, you too are extinguished.

As long as the mountain snow melts, your droplets flow in my stream of consciousness.

Until the day of reckoning, unto death's very doorstop, this humble shell rejoices in the angelic melody you are.

As long as the seas heave and surge, my leaky hull will rock, tossed by your beauty's storm.

Through all time, while winds blow and birds chirp, the mind behind my eyes will not set loose the gossamer soul your body entraps.

Beyond space-time, after the hunger of the black hole is sealed, this small moon will spin around you, sun.

Unceasingly, while my eyes can see, my mind's theater will still replay your image.

Till inning nine, while I can swing a bat, the ball club will talk in the locker room about you.

Until time stops, at the point I transmogrify to a physically insubstantial state, I shall reconstitute your image before my mind's eye.

Ever on, till I assume an incorporeal form, I will hold your form before my imagination.

Ever and ever, until I permutate into an ethereal state, this person will know your face.

From this moment on, till death finishes my mortal coil, yours truly plans to plant your image firmly in my frontal lobe.

While my milk still flows and the bell about my neck still rings, these sides of beef live only to chew the cud of the memory of your mighty longhorns.

As long as my lips can sip, this thin-stemmed glass will savor like finest port the blackberry ethers of your full-bodied vintage.

When K and NaCl cease to exchange in my brain's cells, then your visage will become one with the hill.

Your image will finally be barred from my brain when I die, because my memories of you are like a fly hovering over a big steaming pile.

Your memories are the tunes on my 8-track tape, and when "Stayin' Alive" gets eaten up the tune is over.

My memories of you are curiously strong just like an Altoid; when I can no longer taste the flavor, I know they have shut the lid.

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