Note how the title comes directly from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.



(sonnet #MMMMMMMCMLXXIV)


As hunter's wont, the deer's skull hangs fr'intents
Upon the wooden porch, eye sockets' stale
And empty hollows staring in betrayl
Without a blink, forever, with a sense
Of Death behind their deeper look, pretense
Half shivring down to nothing, bones dried, frail
What? shrinking at the ghastly sight, birds hail
From greenest trees where life sings in defense.
And I...observe in silence, like as twere
Some child.  This womanhood I never knew,
Which crept on me ere I was 'ware, in tour
A joke which laughs 'non in my face.  Skies blue
With whiter cloud battalions, winds bestir
These Maples to soft whispers in what, too?

19May19b