1432

Spurn the temerity—
Rashness of Calvary—
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of Thee—

Still must I hear?—shall hoarse FITZGERALD bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch Reviews
Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my Muse?
Prepare for rhyme—I’ll publish, right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let Satire be my song.

  Oh! Nature’s noblest gift—my grey goose-quill!
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men!
The pen! foredoomed to aid the mental throes
Of brains that labour, big with Verse or Prose;
Though Nymphs forsake, and Critics may deride,
The Lover’s solace, and the Author’s pride.
What Wits! what Poets dost thou daily raise!
How frequent is thy use, how small thy praise!
Condemned at length to be forgotten quite,
With all the pages which ’twas thine to write.
But thou, at least, mine own especial pen!
Once laid aside, but now assumed again,
Our task complete, like Hamet’s shall be free;
Though spurned by others, yet beloved by me:
Then let us soar to-day; no common theme,
No Eastern vision, no distempered dream
Inspires—our path, though full of thorns, is plain;
Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain.

  When Vice triumphant holds her sov’reign sway,
Obey’d by all who nought beside obey;
When Folly, frequent harbinger of crime,
Bedecks her cap with bells of every Clime;
When knaves and fools combined o’er all prevail,
And weigh their Justice in a Golden Scale;
E’en then the boldest start from public sneers,
Afraid of Shame, unknown to other fears,
More darkly sin, by Satire kept in awe,
And shrink from Ridicule, though not from Law.

  Such is the force of Wit! I but not belong
To me the arrows of satiric song;
The royal vices of our age demand
A keener weapon, and a mightier hand.
Still there are follies, e’en for me to chase,
And yield at least amusement in the race:
Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame,
The cry is up, and scribblers are my game:
Speed, Pegasus!—ye strains of great and small,
Ode! Epic! Elegy!—have at you all!
I, too, can scrawl, and once upon a time
I poured along the town a flood of rhyme,
A schoolboy freak, unworthy praise or blame;
I printed—older children do the same.
’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;
A Book’s a Book, altho’ there’s nothing in’t.
Not that a Title’s sounding charm can save
Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave:
This LAMB must own, since his patrician name
Failed to preserve the spurious Farce from shame.
No matter, GEORGE continues still to write,
Tho’ now the name is veiled from public sight.
Moved by the great example, I pursue
The self-same road, but make my own review:
Not seek great JEFFREY’S, yet like him will be
Self-constituted Judge of Poesy.

  A man must serve his time to every trade
Save Censure—Critics all are ready made.
Take hackneyed jokes from MILLER, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A man well skilled to find, or forge a fault;
A turn for punning—call it Attic salt;
To JEFFREY go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet:
Fear not to lie,’twill seem a sharper hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy, ’twill pass for wit;
Care not for feeling—pass your proper jest,
And stand a Critic, hated yet caress’d.

And shall we own such judgment? no—as soon
Seek roses in December—ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff,
Believe a woman or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that’s false, before
You trust in Critics, who themselves are sore;
Or yield one single thought to be misled
By JEFFREY’S heart, or LAMB’S Boeotian head.
To these young tyrants, by themselves misplaced,
Combined usurpers on the Throne of Taste;
To these, when Authors bend in humble awe,
And hail their voice as Truth, their word as Law;
While these are Censors, ’twould be sin to spare;
While such are Critics, why should I forbear?
But yet, so near all modern worthies run,
’Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun;
Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike,
Our Bards and Censors are so much alike.
Then should you ask me, why I venture o’er
The path which POPE and GIFFORD trod before;
If not yet sickened, you can still proceed;
Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read.
“But hold!” exclaims a friend,—”here’s some neglect:
This—that—and t’other line seem incorrect.”
What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got,
And careless Dryden—”Aye, but Pye has not:”—
Indeed!—’tis granted, faith!—but what care I?
Better to err with POPE, than shine with PYE.

  Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise,
When Sense and Wit with Poesy allied,
No fabled Graces, flourished side by side,
From the same fount their inspiration drew,
And, reared by Taste, bloomed fairer as they grew.
Then, in this happy Isle, a POPE’S pure strain
Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
A polished nation’s praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people’s, as the poet’s fame.
Like him great DRYDEN poured the tide of song,
In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong.
Then CONGREVE’S scenes could cheer, or OTWAY’S melt;
For Nature then an English audience felt—
But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
When all to feebler Bards resign their place?
Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
When taste and reason with those times are past.
Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age;
This truth at least let Satire’s self allow,
No dearth of Bards can be complained of now.
The loaded Press beneath her labour groans,
And Printers’ devils shake their weary bones;
While SOUTHEY’S Epics cram the creaking shelves,
And LITTLE’S Lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves.
Thus saith the Preacher: “Nought beneath the sun
Is new,” yet still from change to change we run.
What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The Cow-pox, Tractors, Galvanism, and Gas,
In turns appear, to make the ****** stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts—and all is air!
Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
O’er Taste awhile these Pseudo-bards prevail;
Each country Book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurling lawful Genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own;
Some leaden calf—but whom it matters not,
From soaring SOUTHEY, down to groveling STOTT.

  Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review:
Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
And Rhyme and Blank maintain an equal race;
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
And Tales of Terror jostle on the road;
Immeasurable measures move along;
For simpering Folly loves a varied song,
To strange, mysterious Dulness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
Thus Lays of Minstrels—may they be the last!—
On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.
While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner’s brood
Decoy young Border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding Knights to read who cannot spell,
Despatch a courier to a wizard’s grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.

  Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a Felon, yet but half a Knight.
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.
And think’st thou, SCOTT! by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade,
Let such forego the poet’s sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
And sadly gaze on Gold they cannot gain!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted Muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo’s venal son,
And bid a long “good night to Marmion.”

  These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the Bards to whom the Muse must bow;
While MILTON, DRYDEN, POPE, alike forgot,
Resign their hallowed Bays to WALTER SCOTT.

  The time has been, when yet the Muse was young,
When HOMER swept the lyre, and MARO sung,
An Epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hailed the magic name:
The work of each immortal Bard appears
The single wonder of a thousand years.
Empires have mouldered from the face of earth,
Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth,
Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor Bards, content,
On one great work a life of labour spent:
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the Ballad-monger SOUTHEY rise!
To him let CAMOËNS, MILTON, TASSO yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked BEDFORD for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in Glory’s niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A ****** Phoenix from her ashes risen.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
Arabia’s monstrous, wild, and wond’rous son;
Domdaniel’s dread destroyer, who o’erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e’er knew.
Immortal Hero! all thy foes o’ercome,
For ever reign—the rival of Tom Thumb!
Since startled Metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doomed the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant Genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and Prince in Wales;
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville’s, and not so true.
Oh, SOUTHEY! SOUTHEY! cease thy varied song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkeley-Ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:
“God help thee,” SOUTHEY, and thy readers too.

  Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple WORDSWORTH, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Who warns his friend “to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double;”
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;
And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.
Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of “an idiot Boy;”
A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,
And, like his bard, confounded night with day
So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the “idiot in his glory”
Conceive the Bard the hero of the story.

  Shall gentle COLERIDGE pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still Obscurity’s a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a Pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ***:
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays, the Laureate of the long-eared kind.

Oh! wonder-working LEWIS! Monk, or Bard,
Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy Muse a Sprite, Apollo’s sexton thou!
Whether on ancient tombs thou tak’st thy stand,
By gibb’ring spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,
To please the females of our modest age;
All hail, M.P.! from whose infernal brain
Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command “grim women” throng in crowds,
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,
With “small grey men,”—”wild yagers,” and what not,
To crown with honour thee and WALTER SCOTT:
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease:
Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper Hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta’s fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flushed
Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hushed?
’Tis LITTLE! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his Lay!
Grieved to condemn, the Muse must still be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.
Pure is the flame which o’er her altar burns;
From grosser incense with disgust she turns
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o’er,
She bids thee “mend thy line, and sin no more.”

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian STRANGFORD! with thine eyes of blue,
And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,
Whose plaintive strain each love-sick Miss admires,
And o’er harmonious fustian half expires,
Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author’s sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think’st thou to gain thy verse a higher place,
By dressing Camoëns in a suit of lace?
Mend, STRANGFORD! mend thy morals and thy taste;
Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste:
Cease to deceive; thy pilfered harp restore,
Nor teach the Lusian Bard to copy MOORE.

Behold—Ye Tarts!—one moment spare the text!—
HAYLEY’S last work, and worst—until his next;
Whether he spin poor couplets into plays,
Or **** the dead with purgatorial praise,
His style in youth or age is still the same,
For ever feeble and for ever tame.
Triumphant first see “Temper’s Triumphs” shine!
At least I’m sure they triumphed over mine.
Of “Music’s Triumphs,” all who read may swear
That luckless Music never triumph’d there.

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
On dull devotion—Lo! the Sabbath Bard,
Sepulchral GRAHAME, pours his notes sublime
In mangled prose, nor e’en aspires to rhyme;
Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke,
And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;
And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms,
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms.

  Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings”
A thousand visions of a thousand things,
And shows, still whimpering thro’ threescore of years,
The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers.
And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles!
Thou first, great oracle of tender souls?
Whether them sing’st with equal ease, and grief,
The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf;
Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells,
Or, still in bells delighting, finds a friend
In every chime that jingled from Ostend;
Ah! how much juster were thy Muse’s hap,
If to thy bells thou would’st but add a cap!
Delightful BOWLES! still blessing and still blest,
All love thy strain, but children like it best.
’Tis thine, with gentle LITTLE’S moral song,
To soothe the mania of the amorous throng!
With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,
Ere Miss as yet completes her infant years:
But in her teens thy whining powers are vain;
She quits poor BOWLES for LITTLE’S purer strain.
Now to soft themes thou scornest to confine
The lofty numbers of a harp like thine;
“Awake a louder and a loftier strain,”
Such as none heard before, or will again!
Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,
By more or less, are sung in every book,
From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.
Nor this alone—but, pausing on the road,
The Bard sighs forth a gentle episode,
And gravely tells—attend, each beauteous Miss!—
When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.
Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell,
Stick to thy Sonnets, Man!—at least they sell.
But if some new-born whim, or larger bribe,
Prompt thy crude brain, and claim thee for a scribe:
If ‘chance some bard, though once by dunces feared,
Now, prone in dust, can only be revered;
If Pope, whose fame and genius, from the first,
Have foiled the best of critics, needs the worst,
Do thou essay: each fault, each failing scan;
The first of poets

A confident man feels not a need to speak
on all things with which he does not agree
Though in the proper time and place
he is not afraid to assert his way

And though his words at times cause spurn,
he will admit when they are out of turn
Fearing not the inevitable mistake,
but rather owning it too late

Caring and feeling without hesitation
and not for reciprocal adulation
Emotions are expressed appropriately;
either subtlety or rationally

As honest with others as with himself;
recognizing what he does and doesn’t do well
Claiming to know what he does know
and asks when he don’t

Pursuing tasks for their benefit and or joy
rather than status or fleeting ploys
Those latter things are often great fun,
but worry of them yields none

While in his mind there is good thinking,
he is more occupied with good acting
In order to have concerns of the ideological,
requires labors that are practical

On his confidence, he does not ponder,
as neither he or anyone wonders
of whether he truly possesses it.
We know it.

“I cannot but remember such things were,
  And were most dear to me.”
  ‘Macbeth’

  [”That were most precious to me.”
  ‘Macbeth’, act iv, sc. 3.]


When slow Disease, with all her host of Pains,
Chills the warm tide, which flows along the veins;
When Health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing,
And flies with every changing gale of spring;
Not to the aching frame alone confin’d,
Unyielding pangs assail the drooping mind:
What grisly forms, the spectre-train of woe,
Bid shuddering Nature shrink beneath the blow,
With Resignation wage relentless strife,
While Hope retires appall’d, and clings to life.
Yet less the pang when, through the tedious hour,
Remembrance sheds around her genial power,
Calls back the vanish’d days to rapture given,
When Love was bliss, and Beauty form’d our heaven;
Or, dear to youth, pourtrays each childish scene,
Those fairy bowers, where all in turn have been.
As when, through clouds that pour the summer storm,
The orb of day unveils his distant form,
Gilds with faint beams the crystal dews of rain
And dimly twinkles o’er the watery plain;
Thus, while the future dark and cheerless gleams,
The Sun of Memory, glowing through my dreams,
Though sunk the radiance of his former blaze,
To scenes far distant points his paler rays,
Still rules my senses with unbounded sway,
The past confounding with the present day.

Oft does my heart indulge the rising thought,
Which still recurs, unlook’d for and unsought;
My soul to Fancy’s fond suggestion yields,
And roams romantic o’er her airy fields.
Scenes of my youth, develop’d, crowd to view,
To which I long have bade a last adieu!
Seats of delight, inspiring youthful themes;
Friends lost to me, for aye, except in dreams;
Some, who in marble prematurely sleep,
Whose forms I now remember, but to weep;
Some, who yet urge the same scholastic course
Of early science, future fame the source;
Who, still contending in the studious race,
In quick rotation, fill the senior place!
These, with a thousand visions, now unite,
To dazzle, though they please, my aching sight.

IDA! blest spot, where Science holds her reign,
How joyous, once, I join’d thy youthful train!
Bright, in idea, gleams thy lofty spire,
Again, I mingle with thy playful quire;
Our tricks of mischief, every childish game,
Unchang’d by time or distance, seem the same;
Through winding paths, along the glade I trace
The social smile of every welcome face;
My wonted haunts, my scenes of joy or woe,
Each early boyish friend, or youthful foe,
Our feuds dissolv’d, but not my friendship past,—
I bless the former, and forgive the last.
Hours of my youth! when, nurtur’d in my breast,
To Love a stranger, Friendship made me blest,—
Friendship, the dear peculiar bond of youth,
When every artless ***** throbs with truth;
Untaught by worldly wisdom how to feign,
And check each impulse with prudential rein;
When, all we feel, our honest souls disclose,
In love to friends, in open hate to foes;
No varnish’d tales the lips of youth repeat,
No dear-bought knowledge purchased by deceit;
Hypocrisy, the gift of lengthen’d years,
Matured by age, the garb of Prudence wears:
When, now, the Boy is ripen’d into Man,
His careful Sire chalks forth some wary plan;
Instructs his Son from Candour’s path to shrink,
Smoothly to speak, and cautiously to think;
Still to assent, and never to deny—
A patron’s praise can well reward the lie:
And who, when Fortune’s warning voice is heard,
Would lose his opening prospects for a word?
Although, against that word, his heart rebel,
And Truth, indignant, all his ***** swell.

  Away with themes like this! not mine the task,
From flattering friends to tear the hateful mask;
Let keener bards delight in Satire’s sting,
My Fancy soars not on Detraction’s wing:
Once, and but once, she aim’d a deadly blow,
To hurl Defiance on a secret Foe;
But when that foe, from feeling or from shame,
The cause unknown, yet still to me the same,
Warn’d by some friendly hint, perchance, retir’d,
With this submission all her rage expired.
From dreaded pangs that feeble Foe to save,
She hush’d her young resentment, and forgave.
Or, if my Muse a Pedant’s portrait drew,
POMPOSUS’ virtues are but known to few:
I never fear’d the young usurper’s nod,
And he who wields must, sometimes, feel the rod.
If since on Granta’s failings, known to all
Who share the converse of a college hall,
She sometimes trifled in a lighter strain,
’Tis past, and thus she will not sin again:
Soon must her early song for ever cease,
And, all may rail, when I shall rest in peace.

  Here, first remember’d be the joyous band,
Who hail’d me chief, obedient to command;
Who join’d with me, in every boyish sport,
Their first adviser, and their last resort;
Nor shrunk beneath the upstart pedant’s frown,
Or all the sable glories of his gown;
Who, thus, transplanted from his father’s school,
Unfit to govern, ignorant of rule—
Succeeded him, whom all unite to praise,
The dear preceptor of my early days,
PROBUS, the pride of science, and the boast—
To IDA now, alas! for ever lost!
With him, for years, we search’d the classic page,
And fear’d the Master, though we lov’d the Sage:
Retir’d at last, his small yet peaceful seat
From learning’s labour is the blest retreat.
POMPOSUS fills his magisterial chair;
POMPOSUS governs,—but, my Muse, forbear:
Contempt, in silence, be the pedant’s lot,
His name and precepts be alike forgot;
No more his mention shall my verse degrade,—
To him my tribute is already paid.

  High, through those elms with hoary branches crown’d
Fair IDA’S bower adorns the landscape round;
There Science, from her favour’d seat, surveys
The vale where rural Nature claims her praise;
To her awhile resigns her youthful train,
Who move in joy, and dance along the plain;
In scatter’d groups, each favour’d haunt pursue,
Repeat old pastimes, and discover new;
Flush’d with his rays, beneath the noontide Sun,
In rival bands, between the wickets run,
Drive o’er the sward the ball with active force,
Or chase with nimble feet its rapid course.
But these with slower steps direct their way,
Where Brent’s cool waves in limpid currents stray,
While yonder few search out some green retreat,
And arbours shade them from the summer heat:
Others, again, a pert and lively crew,
Some rough and thoughtless stranger plac’d in view,
With frolic quaint their antic jests expose,
And tease the grumbling rustic as he goes;
Nor rest with this, but many a passing fray
Tradition treasures for a future day:
“’Twas here the gather’d swains for vengeance fought,
And here we earn’d the conquest dearly bought:
Here have we fled before superior might,
And here renew’d the wild tumultuous fight.”
While thus our souls with early passions swell,
In lingering tones resounds the distant bell;
Th’ allotted hour of daily sport is o’er,
And Learning beckons from her temple’s door.
No splendid tablets grace her simple hall,
But ruder records fill the dusky wall:
There, deeply carv’d, behold! each Tyro’s name
Secures its owner’s academic fame;
Here mingling view the names of Sire and Son,
The one long grav’d, the other just begun:
These shall survive alike when Son and Sire,
Beneath one common stroke of fate expire;
Perhaps, their last memorial these alone,
Denied, in death, a monumental stone,
Whilst to the gale in mournful cadence wave
The sighing weeds, that hide their nameless grave.
And, here, my name, and many an early friend’s,
Along the wall in lengthen’d line extends.
Though, still, our deeds amuse the youthful race,
Who tread our steps, and fill our former place,
Who young obeyed their lords in silent awe,
Whose nod commanded, and whose voice was law;
And now, in turn, possess the reins of power,
To rule, the little Tyrants of an hour;
Though sometimes, with the Tales of ancient day,
They pass the dreary Winter’s eve away;
“And, thus, our former rulers stemm’d the tide,
And, thus, they dealt the combat, side by side;
Just in this place, the mouldering walls they scaled,
Nor bolts, nor bars, against their strength avail’d;
Here PROBUS came, the rising fray to quell,
And, here, he falter’d forth his last farewell;
And, here, one night abroad they dared to roam,
While bold POMPOSUS bravely staid at home;”
While thus they speak, the hour must soon arrive,
When names of these, like ours, alone survive:
Yet a few years, one general wreck will whelm
The faint remembrance of our fairy realm.

  Dear honest race! though now we meet no more,
One last long look on what we were before—
Our first kind greetings, and our last adieu—
Drew tears from eyes unus’d to weep with you.
Through splendid circles, Fashion’s gaudy world,
Where Folly’s glaring standard waves unfurl’d,
I plung’d to drown in noise my fond regret,
And all I sought or hop’d was to forget:
Vain wish! if, chance, some well-remember’d face,
Some old companion of my early race,
Advanc’d to claim his friend with honest joy,
My eyes, my heart, proclaim’d me still a boy;
The glittering scene, the fluttering groups around,
Were quite forgotten when my friend was found;
The smiles of Beauty, (for, alas! I’ve known
What ’tis to bend before Love’s mighty throne;)
The smiles of Beauty, though those smiles were dear,
Could hardly charm me, when that friend was near:
My thoughts bewilder’d in the fond surprise,
The woods of IDA danc’d before my eyes;
I saw the sprightly wand’rers pour along,
I saw, and join’d again the joyous throng;
Panting, again I trac’d her lofty grove,
And Friendship’s feelings triumph’d over Love.

  Yet, why should I alone with such delight
Retrace the circuit of my former flight?
Is there no cause beyond the common claim,
Endear’d to all in childhood’s very name?
Ah! sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear
To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad, the love denied at home.
Those hearts, dear IDA, have I found in thee,
A home, a world, a paradise to me.
Stern Death forbade my orphan youth to share
The tender guidance of a Father’s care;
Can Rank, or e’en a Guardian’s name supply
The love, which glistens in a Father’s eye?
For this, can Wealth, or Title’s sound atone,
Made, by a Parent’s early loss, my own?
What Brother springs a Brother’s love to seek?
What Sister’s gentle kiss has prest my cheek?
For me, how dull the vacant moments rise,
To no fond ***** link’d by kindred ties!
Oft, in the progress of some fleeting dream,
Fraternal smiles, collected round me seem;
While still the visions to my heart are prest,
The voice of Love will murmur in my rest:
I hear—I wake—and in the sound rejoice!
I hear again,—but, ah! no Brother’s voice.
A Hermit, ’midst of crowds, I fain must stray
Alone, though thousand pilgrims fill the way;
While these a thousand kindred wreaths entwine,
I cannot call one single blossom mine:
What then remains? in solitude to groan,
To mix in friendship, or to sigh alone?
Thus, must I cling to some endearing hand,
And none more dear, than IDA’S social band.

  Alonzo! best and dearest of my friends,
Thy name ennobles him, who thus commends:
From this fond tribute thou canst gain no praise;
The praise is his, who now that tribute pays.
Oh! in the promise of thy early youth,
If Hope anticipate the words of Truth!
Some loftier bard shall sing thy glorious name,
To build his own, upon thy deathless fame:
Friend of my heart, and foremost of the list
Of those with whom I lived supremely blest;
Oft have we drain’d the font of ancient lore,
Though drinking deeply, thirsting still the more;
Yet, when Confinement’s lingering hour was done,
Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one:
Together we impell’d the flying ball,
Together waited in our tutor’s hall;
Together join’d in cricket’s manly toil,
Or shar’d the produce of the river’s spoil;
Or plunging from the green declining shore,
Our pliant limbs the buoyant billows bore:
In every element, unchang’d, the same,
All, all that brothers should be, but the name.

  Nor, yet, are you forgot, my jocund Boy!
DAVUS, the harbinger of childish joy;
For ever foremost in the ranks of fun,
The laughing herald of the harmless pun;
Yet, with a breast of such materials made,
Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid;
Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel
In Danger’s path, though not untaught to feel.
Still, I remember, in the factious strife,
The rustic’s musket aim’d against my life:
High pois’d in air the massy weapon hung,
A cry of horror burst from every tongue:
Whilst I, in combat with another foe,
Fought on, unconscious of th’ impending blow;
Your arm, brave Boy, arrested his career—
Forward you sprung, insensible to fear;
Disarm’d, and baffled by your conquering hand,
The grovelling Savage roll’d upon the sand:
An act like this, can simple thanks repay?
Or all the labours of a grateful lay?
Oh no! whene’er my breast forgets the deed,
That instant, DAVUS, it deserves to bleed.

  LYCUS! on me thy claims are justly great:
Thy milder virtues could my Muse relate,
To thee, alone, unrivall’d, would belong
The feeble efforts of my lengthen’d song.
Well canst thou boast, to lead in senates fit,
A Spartan firmness, with Athenian wit:
Though yet, in embryo, these perfections shine,
LYCUS! thy father’s fame will soon be thine.
Where Learning nurtures the superior mind,
What may we hope, from genius thus refin’d;
When Time, at length, matures thy growing years,
How wilt thou tower, above thy fellow peers!
Prudence and sense, a spirit bold and free,
With Honour’s soul, united beam in thee.

Shall fair EURYALUS, pass by unsung?
From ancient lineage, not unworthy, sprung:
What, though one sad dissension bade us part,
That name is yet embalm’d within my heart,
Yet, at the mention, does that heart rebound,
And palpitate, responsive to the sound;
Envy dissolved our ties, and not our will:
We once were friends,—I’ll think, we are so still.
A form unmatch’d in Nature’s partial mould,
A heart untainted, we, in thee, behold:
Yet, not the Senate’s thunder thou shall wield,
Nor seek for glory, in the tented field:
To minds of ruder texture, these be given—
Thy soul shall nearer soar its native heaven.
Haply, in polish’d courts might be thy seat,
But, that thy tongue could never forge deceit:
The courtier’s supple bow, and sneering smile,
The flow of compliment, the slippery wile,
Would make that breast, with indignation, burn,
And, all the glittering snares, to tempt thee, spurn.
Domestic happiness will stamp thy fate;
Sacred to love, unclouded e’er by hate;
The world admire thee, and thy friends adore;—
Ambition’s slave, alone, would toil for more.

  Now last, but nearest, of the social band,
See honest, open, generous CLEON stand;
With scarce one speck, to cloud the pleasing scene,
No vice degrades that purest soul serene.
On the same day, our studious race begun,
On the same day, our studious race was run;
Thus, side by side, we pass’d our first career,
Thus, side by side, we strove for many a year:
At last, concluded our scholastic life,
We neither conquer’d in the classic strife:
As Speakers, each supports an equal name,
And crowds allow to both a partial fame:
To soothe a youthful Rival’s early pride,
Though Cleon’s candour would the palm divide,
Yet Candour’s self compels me now to own,
Justice awards it to my Friend alone.

  Oh! Friends regretted, Scenes for ever dear,
Remembrance hails you with her warmest tear!
Drooping, she bends o’er pensive Fancy’s urn,
To trace the hours, which never can return;
Yet, with the retrospection loves to dwell,
And soothe the sorrows of her last farewell!
Yet greets the triumph of my boyish mind,
As infant laurels round my head were twin’d;
When PROBUS’ praise repaid my lyric song,
Or plac’d me higher in the studious throng;
Or when my first harangue receiv’d applause,
His sage instruction the primeval cause,
What gratitude, to him, my soul possest,
While hope of dawning honours fill’d my breast!
For all my humble fame, to him alone,
The praise is due, who made that fame my own.
Oh! could I soar above these feeble lays,
These young effusions of my early days,
To him my Muse her noblest strain would give,
The song might perish, but the theme might live.
Yet, why for him the needless verse essay?
His honour’d name requires no vain display:
By every son of grateful IDA blest,
It finds an ech

. so yeah, perhaps the aboriginals, the argument for the noble savage is there... point being, they have a narrative, more eloquent than the moneticised outside the frantic fanaticism of Harry Potter, a plagiarism of Merlin... etc. etc., with all the scientific superiority, a narrative in collectivism based upon plagiarism? does it really matter? the people who spurn on the superiority of western culture... let's just say, they love to gamble, but don't understand nature's gambling pattern of weeding out the weak... and... given their opinions? i wouldn't want to share a meal with them... contradictory *******... tell them about the Manchester attacks, and they'll cite Yemen! i find it rather uncomfortable sharing a public toilet with them... to begin with... but eating with them? what a strange anticipation of the most profound profanity!
            
                                 so yeah...
  nice critique...
"philosopher" *** sophist -
namely a rhetorician...

i love the giggles,
don't you love the giggles?

philosophy is something to engage
with, rather than explain...
more a tartar steak than
a medium-done slash of slaughterhouse
debris...

ahem... where's your western narrative?
where is the sociological focus?
the focus point?
the campfire?

  where, is, the, glue?

    can't see it...
western civilization is superior,
i grant you that,
but, where is the self-inflammatory
implosion?
  the self-reflecting critique?

look at your literature!
my good fellow!
  the pop-***** of vampire-clad-
neo-gothica?
you have to be kidding me...
too many facts, imbedded with
seeking counter-doubts (i.e. facts):
compensated with an antithesis
of a narrative principle...

a right, without a wrong...
a fact, without a narrative,
is pointless educational rubric -
no more finding an point
of answer, than regurgitating a bunch
of facts...
      i would be so certain as to joke
about the aboriginal culture...
when the western narration continuum
is plagued,
   by inconsistent narratives...
narratives that would never
want me to allow myself
a focus for congregating...

   no, sorry...
           you sit that **** alone in youir
little group-therapy sessions...
i'm about to do a Pontius Pilate
revision...
   i'm washing my hands away
from the gloat...
i can't stomach it...

      i don't want to stomach it...
i don't even adhere to an I.Q. discussion
as astounding racial differences...
i have already the point breaker:
and why so few black athletes compete
in the swimming events,
while so many are prescribed the
100m / 200m distance?

            what comes naturally...
800m / 1500m races?
white...
          the quasi-marathon running?
evidently Kenyan or Ethiopian...

i hate this, the vest iz v besht...
                       i regurgitate on this
factoid...
               with diarrhoea...

for all the science involved...
what is it, exactly, that constitutes,
the gluing fabric of community?

    i hate to say this,
but seldom facts are a differential aspect
    of exploratory conundrums...
Moby **** type of narratives?
the integral aspects...
      science has overtaken the expression
of life, sanitized it,
   securing an antithesis of
misery and mortality...
                    with: "facts"...
      
i might share the pH scale with someone...
but if i don't share the commonality of
a narrative?
  **** me, third party sources...
why should i share?
we share the same factoid,
why should we even bother consummating
this fact, over lunch?!

no bother!
there is no reason!
      live your life, let me live mine...
but don't you ******* even bother
dictating what i can, or can't do,
on the allowance of having invested
in a private property,
you, *******, english, ****!

  savvy?!

  the vest iz z best-chore...
   sure sure...
      love your literature, wonder
of the ******* world!
          YA ******* and your journalism?
makes Mecca pilgrims blush!
  wonderful!
                
...and for not particular reason...
vampires, werewolves,
zombies, the whole generic
exhausted stereotype -
   applause! applause!
applause!

              what?! health service?
i was lucky to have met up with my socialistic
accessible doctor,
   how many? 2 years to spare from
the last visit...
   zee vest iz z best!

            because why would i have considered
studying chemistry to an edinburgh university
level...
    and not began a post-scriptum of schooling,
beginning work in a supermarket?!

nice narrative, love the advertisement...
keep up the belittling tactic...
   glorifying your ***** wiped clean...
nay bother...
  as the Picts used t say...
                there is an actual masochistic
attache of internalized hate,
that even i can accommodate...

                     i hate gloating,
i hate boasting...
   and i hate the sort of people who
self-identify themselves as philosophers...
rather than sophists...
the sort of people:
who, simply, can't, keep, their, mouths,
shut!

don't criticise cultures,
when your own culture...
   is gearing up to problematic investments
of its own,
most notably, the teenage mental
health crisis...
          please...
                       this is not a time scant
for diminishing the already
queuing problems,
   by resorting to I.Q and race arguments...
the ******* can claim to be
philosophers, and entertain
the centre stage...
   i have a bench...
  in a park, talking to an old east london
geezer about rayleigh bikes...
and the scalpel attitude to
finding a prefix, negation,
                in the word disease...

western civilization has been gripped
with an Sunni Islam virus of
a superiority complex...
             they sure as **** know how
to point the good stuff...
   but slightly less...
                dream-detached when it comes
to the current,
    problems...
                  but hey!
the barbaric peoples are our closest
allies of worthy comparison...
   compare a ******* donkey
to a galloping horse!
  that'll fix it!

- but i thought that western culture was
all for the inbreds,
the down syndromes?
  the last birth mothers?!
   so?
        some cultures are somehow
more clingy to a peoticization of
the past...
    which... says much more...
for what currently grips the western
inconvenience in the pursuit of
a narrative, whether historical,
or fictional.

By this, sad Hero, with love unacquainted,
Viewing Leander’s face, fell down and fainted.
He kissed her and breathed life into her lips,
Wherewith as one displeased away she trips.
Yet, as she went, full often looked behind,
And many poor excuses did she find
To linger by the way, and once she stayed,
And would have turned again, but was afraid,
In offering parley, to be counted light.
So on she goes and in her idle flight
Her painted fan of curled plumes let fall,
Thinking to train Leander therewithal.
He, being a novice, knew not what she meant
But stayed, and after her a letter sent,
Which joyful Hero answered in such sort,
As he had hope to scale the beauteous fort
Wherein the liberal Graces locked their wealth,
And therefore to her tower he got by stealth.
Wide open stood the door, he need not climb,
And she herself before the pointed time
Had spread the board, with roses strowed the room,
And oft looked out, and mused he did not come.
At last he came.

O who can tell the greeting
These greedy lovers had at their first meeting.
He asked, she gave, and nothing was denied.
Both to each other quickly were affied.
Look how their hands, so were their hearts united,
And what he did she willingly requited.
(Sweet are the kisses, the embracements sweet,
When like desires and affections meet,
For from the earth to heaven is Cupid raised,
Where fancy is in equal balance peised.)
Yet she this rashness suddenly repented
And turned aside, and to herself lamented
As if her name and honour had been wronged
By being possessed of him for whom she longed.
Ay, and she wished, albeit not from her heart
That he would leave her turret and depart.
The mirthful god of amorous pleasure smiled
To see how he this captive nymph beguiled.
For hitherto he did but fan the fire,
And kept it down that it might mount the higher.
Now waxed she jealous lest his love abated,
Fearing her own thoughts made her to be hated.
Therefore unto him hastily she goes
And, like light Salmacis, her body throws
Upon his ***** where with yielding eyes
She offers up herself a sacrifice
To slake his anger if he were displeased.
O, what god would not therewith be appeased?
Like Aesop’s **** this jewel he enjoyed
And as a brother with his sister toyed
Supposing nothing else was to be done,
Now he her favour and good will had won.
But know you not that creatures wanting sense
By nature have a mutual appetence,
And, wanting organs to advance a step,
Moved by love’s force unto each other lep?
Much more in subjects having intellect
Some hidden influence breeds like effect.
Albeit Leander rude in love and raw,
Long dallying with Hero, nothing saw
That might delight him more, yet he suspected
Some amorous rites or other were neglected.
Therefore unto his body hers he clung.
She, fearing on the rushes to be flung,
Strived with redoubled strength; the more she strived
The more a gentle pleasing heat revived,
Which taught him all that elder lovers know.
And now the same gan so to scorch and glow
As in plain terms (yet cunningly) he craved it.
Love always makes those eloquent that have it.
She, with a kind of granting, put him by it
And ever, as he thought himself most nigh it,
Like to the tree of Tantalus, she fled
And, seeming lavish, saved her maidenhead.
Ne’er king more sought to keep his diadem,
Than Hero this inestimable gem.
Above our life we love a steadfast friend,
Yet when a token of great worth we send,
We often kiss it, often look thereon,
And stay the messenger that would be gone.
No marvel then, though Hero would not yield
So soon to part from that she dearly held.
Jewels being lost are found again, this never;
’Tis lost but once, and once lost, lost forever.

Now had the morn espied her lover’s steeds,
Whereat she starts, puts on her purple weeds,
And red for anger that he stayed so long
All headlong throws herself the clouds among.
And now Leander, fearing to be missed,
Embraced her suddenly, took leave, and kissed.
Long was he taking leave, and loath to go,
And kissed again as lovers use to do.
Sad Hero wrung him by the hand and wept
Saying, “Let your vows and promises be kept.”
Then standing at the door she turned about
As loath to see Leander going out.
And now the sun that through th’ horizon peeps,
As pitying these lovers, downward creeps,
So that in silence of the cloudy night,
Though it was morning, did he take his flight.
But what the secret trusty night concealed
Leander’s amorous habit soon revealed.
With Cupid’s myrtle was his bonnet crowned,
About his arms the purple riband wound
Wherewith she wreathed her largely spreading hair.
Nor could the youth abstain, but he must wear
The sacred ring wherewith she was endowed
When first religious chastity she vowed.
Which made his love through Sestos to be known,
And thence unto Abydos sooner blown
Than he could sail; for incorporeal fame
Whose weight consists in nothing but her name,
Is swifter than the wind, whose tardy plumes
Are reeking water and dull earthly fumes.
Home when he came, he seemed not to be there,
But, like exiled air ****** from his sphere,
Set in a foreign place; and straight from thence,
Alcides like, by mighty violence
He would have chased away the swelling main
That him from her unjustly did detain.
Like as the sun in a diameter
Fires and inflames objects removed far,
And heateth kindly, shining laterally,
So beauty sweetly quickens when ’tis nigh,
But being separated and removed,
Burns where it cherished, murders where it loved.
Therefore even as an index to a book,
So to his mind was young Leander’s look.
O, none but gods have power their love to hide,
Affection by the countenance is descried.
The light of hidden fire itself discovers,
And love that is concealed betrays poor lovers,
His secret flame apparently was seen.
Leander’s father knew where he had been
And for the same mildly rebuked his son,
Thinking to quench the sparkles new begun.
But love resisted once grows passionate,
And nothing more than counsel lovers hate.
For as a hot proud horse highly disdains
To have his head controlled, but breaks the reins,
Spits forth the ringled bit, and with his hooves
Checks the submissive ground; so he that loves,
The more he is restrained, the worse he fares.
What is it now, but mad Leander dares?
“O Hero, Hero!” thus he cried full oft;
And then he got him to a rock aloft,
Where having spied her tower, long stared he on’t,
And prayed the narrow toiling Hellespont
To part in twain, that he might come and go;
But still the rising billows answered, “No.”
With that he stripped him to the ivory skin
And, crying “Love, I come,” leaped lively in.
Whereat the sapphire visaged god grew proud,
And made his capering Triton sound aloud,
Imagining that Ganymede, displeased,
Had left the heavens; therefore on him he seized.
Leander strived; the waves about him wound,
And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground
Was strewed with pearl, and in low coral groves
Sweet singing mermaids sported with their loves
On heaps of heavy gold, and took great pleasure
To spurn in careless sort the shipwrack treasure.
For here the stately azure palace stood
Where kingly Neptune and his train abode.
The ***** god embraced him, called him “Love,”
And swore he never should return to Jove.
But when he knew it was not Ganymede,
For under water he was almost dead,
He heaved him up and, looking on his face,
Beat down the bold waves with his triple mace,
Which mounted up, intending to have kissed him,
And fell in drops like tears because they missed him.
Leander, being up, began to swim
And, looking back, saw Neptune follow him,
Whereat aghast, the poor soul ‘gan to cry
“O, let me visit Hero ere I die!”
The god put Helle’s bracelet on his arm,
And swore the sea should never do him harm.
He clapped his plump cheeks, with his tresses played
And, smiling wantonly, his love bewrayed.
He watched his arms and, as they opened wide
At every stroke, betwixt them would he slide
And steal a kiss, and then run out and dance,
And, as he turned, cast many a lustful glance,
And threw him gaudy toys to please his eye,
And dive into the water, and there pry
Upon his breast, his thighs, and every limb,
And up again, and close beside him swim,
And talk of love.

Leander made reply,
“You are deceived; I am no woman, I.”
Thereat smiled Neptune, and then told a tale,
How that a shepherd, sitting in a vale,
Played with a boy so fair and kind,
As for his love both earth and heaven pined;
That of the cooling river durst not drink,
Lest water nymphs should pull him from the brink.
And when he sported in the fragrant lawns,
Goat footed satyrs and upstaring fauns
Would steal him thence. Ere half this tale was done,
“Ay me,” Leander cried, “th’ enamoured sun
That now should shine on Thetis’ glassy bower,
Descends upon my radiant Hero’s tower.
O, that these tardy arms of mine were wings!”
And, as he spake, upon the waves he springs.
Neptune was angry that he gave no ear,
And in his heart revenging malice bare.
He flung at him his mace but, as it went,
He called it in, for love made him repent.
The mace, returning back, his own hand hit
As meaning to be venged for darting it.
When this fresh bleeding wound Leander viewed,
His colour went and came, as if he rued
The grief which Neptune felt. In gentle *******
Relenting thoughts, remorse, and pity rests.
And who have hard hearts and obdurate minds,
But vicious, harebrained, and illiterate hinds?
The god, seeing him with pity to be moved,
Thereon concluded that he was beloved.
(Love is too full of faith, too credulous,
With folly and false hope deluding us.)
Wherefore, Leander’s fancy to surprise,
To the rich Ocean for gifts he flies.
’tis wisdom to give much; a gift prevails
When deep persuading oratory fails.

By this Leander, being near the land,
Cast down his weary feet and felt the sand.
Breathless albeit he were he rested not
Till to the solitary tower he got,
And knocked and called. At which celestial noise
The longing heart of Hero much more joys
Than nymphs and shepherds when the timbrel rings,
Or crooked dolphin when the sailor sings.
She stayed not for her robes but straight arose
And, drunk with gladness, to the door she goes,
Where seeing a naked man, she screeched for fear
(Such sights as this to tender maids are rare)
And ran into the dark herself to hide.
(Rich jewels in the dark are soonest spied).
Unto her was he led, or rather drawn
By those white limbs which sparkled through the lawn.
The nearer that he came, the more she fled,
And, seeking refuge, slipped into her bed.
Whereon Leander sitting thus began,
Through numbing cold, all feeble, faint, and wan.
“If not for love, yet, love, for pity sake,
Me in thy bed and maiden ***** take.
At least vouchsafe these arms some little room,
Who, hoping to embrace thee, cheerly swum.
This head was beat with many a churlish billow,
And therefore let it rest upon thy pillow.”
Herewith affrighted, Hero shrunk away,
And in her lukewarm place Leander lay,
Whose lively heat, like fire from heaven fet,
Would animate gross clay and higher set
The drooping thoughts of base declining souls
Than dreary Mars carousing nectar bowls.
His hands he cast upon her like a snare.
She, overcome with shame and sallow fear,
Like chaste Diana when Actaeon spied her,
Being suddenly betrayed, dived down to hide her.
And, as her silver body downward went,
With both her hands she made the bed a tent,
And in her own mind thought herself secure,
O’ercast with dim and darksome coverture.
And now she lets him whisper in her ear,
Flatter, entreat, promise, protest and swear;
Yet ever, as he greedily assayed
To touch those dainties, she the harpy played,
And every limb did, as a soldier stout,
Defend the fort, and keep the foeman out.
For though the rising ivory mount he scaled,
Which is with azure circling lines empaled,
Much like a globe (a globe may I term this,
By which love sails to regions full of bliss)
Yet there with Sisyphus he toiled in vain,
Till gentle parley did the truce obtain.
Wherein Leander on her quivering breast
Breathless spoke something, and sighed out the rest;
Which so prevailed, as he with small ado
Enclosed her in his arms and kissed her too.
And every kiss to her was as a charm,
And to Leander as a fresh alarm,
So that the truce was broke and she, alas,
(Poor silly maiden) at his mercy was.
Love is not full of pity (as men say)
But deaf and cruel where he means to prey.
Even as a bird, which in our hands we wring,
Forth plungeth and oft flutters with her wing,
She trembling strove.

This strife of hers (like that
Which made the world) another world begat
Of unknown joy. Treason was in her thought,
And cunningly to yield herself she sought.
Seeming not won, yet won she was at length.
In such wars women use but half their strength.
Leander now, like Theban Hercules,
Entered the orchard of th’ Hesperides;
Whose fruit none rightly can describe but he
That pulls or shakes it from the golden tree.
And now she wished this night were never done,
And sighed to think upon th’ approaching sun;
For much it grieved her that the bright daylight
Should know the pleasure of this blessed night,
And them, like Mars and Erycine, display
Both in each other’s arms chained as they lay.
Again, she knew not how to frame her look,
Or speak to him, who in a moment took
That which so long so charily she kept,
And fain by stealth away she would have crept,
And to some corner secretly have gone,
Leaving Leander in the bed alone.
But as her naked feet were whipping out,
He on the sudden clinged her so about,
That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid.
One half appeared, the other half was hid.
Thus near the bed she blushing stood upright,
And from her countenance behold ye might
A kind of twilight break, which through the hair,
As from an orient cloud, glimpsed here and there,
And round about the chamber this false morn
Brought forth the day before the day was born.
So Hero’s ruddy cheek Hero betrayed,
And her all naked to his sight displayed,
Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took
Than Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look.
By this, Apollo’s golden harp began
To sound forth music to the ocean,
Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard
But he the bright day-bearing car prepared
And ran before, as harbinger of light,
And with his flaring beams mocked ugly night,
Till she, o’ercome with anguish, shame, and rage,
Danged down to hell her loathsome carriage.

Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy.


Tragedy, as it was antiently compos’d, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight,
stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us’d against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch
and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse.  The Apostle Paul himself thought it not
unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy
Scripture, I Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting on the
Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts
distinguisht each by a Chorus of Heavenly Harpings and Song
between.  Heretofore Men in highest dignity have labour’d not a
little to be thought able to compose a Tragedy.  Of that honour
Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious, then before of his
attaining to the Tyranny. Augustus Caesar also had begun his
Ajax, but unable to please his own judgment with what he had
begun. left it unfinisht.  Seneca the Philosopher is by some thought
the Author of those Tragedies (at lest the best of them) that go
under that name.  Gregory Nazianzen a Father of the Church,
thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a
Tragedy which he entitl’d, Christ suffering. This is mention’d to
vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which
in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common
Interludes; hap’ning through the Poets error of intermixing Comic
stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and
****** persons, which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and
brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the people. And
though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in
case of self defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an
Epistle; in behalf of this Tragedy coming forth after the antient
manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus
much before-hand may be Epistl’d; that Chorus is here introduc’d
after the Greek manner, not antient only but modern, and still in
use among the Italians. In the modelling therefore of this Poem
with good reason, the Antients and Italians are rather follow’d, as
of much more authority and fame. The measure of Verse us’d in
the Chorus is of all sorts, call’d by the Greeks Monostrophic, or
rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe
or Epod, which were a kind of Stanza’s fram’d only for the Music,
then us’d with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the Poem, and
therefore not material; or being divided into Stanza’s or Pauses
they may be call’d Allaeostropha.  Division into Act and Scene
referring chiefly to the Stage (to which this work never was
intended) is here omitted.

It suffices if the whole Drama be found not produc’t beyond the
fift Act, of the style and uniformitie, and that commonly call’d the
Plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such
oeconomy, or disposition of the fable as may stand best with
verisimilitude and decorum; they only will best judge who are not
unacquainted with Aeschulus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three
Tragic Poets unequall’d yet by any, and the best rule to all who
endeavour to write Tragedy. The circumscription of time wherein
the whole Drama begins and ends, is according to antient rule, and
best example, within the space of 24 hours.



The ARGUMENT.


Samson made Captive, Blind, and now in the Prison at Gaza, there
to labour as in a common work-house, on a Festival day, in the
general cessation from labour, comes forth into the open Air, to a
place nigh, somewhat retir’d there to sit a while and bemoan his
condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain
friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek
to comfort him what they can ; then by his old Father Manoa, who
endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his
liberty by ransom; lastly, that this Feast was proclaim’d by the
Philistins as a day of Thanksgiving for thir deliverance from the
hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him.  Manoa then
departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistian Lords for
Samson’s redemption; who in the mean while is visited by other
persons; and lastly by a publick Officer to require coming to the
Feast before the Lords and People, to play or shew his strength in
thir presence; he at first refuses, dismissing the publick officer with
absolute denyal to come; at length perswaded inwardly that this
was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the
second time with great threatnings to fetch him; the Chorus yet
remaining on the place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope, to
procure e’re long his Sons deliverance: in the midst of which
discourse an Ebrew comes in haste confusedly at first; and
afterward more distinctly relating the Catastrophe, what Samson
had done to the Philistins, and by accident to himself; wherewith
the Tragedy ends.


The Persons

Samson.
Manoa the father of Samson.
Dalila his wife.
Harapha of Gath.
Publick Officer.
Messenger.
Chorus of Danites


The Scene before the Prison in Gaza.

Sam:  A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of Sun or shade,
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toyl,
Daily in the common Prison else enjoyn’d me,
Where I a Prisoner chain’d, scarce freely draw
The air imprison’d also, close and damp,
Unwholsom draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of Heav’n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn Feast the people hold
To Dagon thir Sea-Idol, and forbid
Laborious works, unwillingly this rest
Thir Superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of Hornets arm’d, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at last in sight
Of both my Parents all in flames ascended
From off the Altar, where an Off’ring burn’d,
As in a fiery column charioting
His Godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal’d to Abraham’s race?
Why was my breeding order’d and prescrib’d
As of a person separate to God,
Design’d for great exploits; if I must dye
Betray’d, Captiv’d, and both my Eyes put out,
Made of my Enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in Brazen Fetters under task
With this Heav’n-gifted strength? O glorious strength
Put to the labour of a Beast, debas’t
Lower then bondslave! Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine Prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfilld but through mine own default,
Whom have I to complain of but my self?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodg’d, how easily bereft me,
Under the Seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it
O’recome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensom,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest suttleties, not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when he gave me strength, to shew withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my Hair.
But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest dispensation, which herein
Happ’ly had ends above my reach to know:
Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
And proves the sourse of all my miseries;
So many, and so huge, that each apart
Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull’d, which might in part my grief have eas’d,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos’d
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more then half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th’ eye confin’d?
So obvious and so easie to be quench’t,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus’d,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exil’d from light;
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but O yet more miserable!
My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,
Buried, yet not exempt
By priviledge of death and burial
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet stearing this way;
Perhaps my enemies who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Thir daily practice to afflict me more.

Chor:  This, this is he; softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him;
O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffus’d,
With languish’t head unpropt,
As one past hope, abandon’d
And by himself given over;
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O’re worn and soild;
Or do my eyes misrepresent?  Can this be hee,
That Heroic, that Renown’d,
Irresistible Samson? whom unarm’d
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand;
Who tore the Lion, as the Lion tears the Kid,
Ran on embattelld Armies clad in Iron,
And weaponless himself,
Made Arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer’d Cuirass,
Chalybean temper’d steel, and frock of mail
Adamantean Proof;
But safest he who stood aloof,
When insupportably his foot advanc’t,
In scorn of thir proud arms and warlike tools,
Spurn’d them to death by Troops.  The bold Ascalonite
Fled from his Lion ramp, old Warriors turn’d
Thir plated backs under his heel;
Or grovling soild thir crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to Hand,
The Jaw of a dead ***, his sword of bone,
A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestin
In Ramath-lechi famous to this day:
Then by main force pull’d up, and on his shoulders bore
The Gates of Azza, Post, and massie Bar
Up to the Hill by Hebron, seat of Giants old,
No journey of a Sabbath day, and loaded so;
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up Heav’n.
Which shall I first bewail,
Thy ******* or lost Sight,
Prison within Prison
Inseparably dark?
Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)
The Dungeon of thy self; thy Soul
(Which Men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)
Imprison’d now indeed,
In real darkness of the body dwells,
Shut up from outward light
To incorporate with gloomy night;
For inward light alas
Puts forth no visual beam.
O mirror of our fickle state,
Since man on earth unparallel’d!
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall’n.
For him I reckon not in high estate
Whom long descent of birth
Or the sphear of fortune raises;
But thee whose strength, while vertue was her mate
Might have subdu’d the Earth,
Universally crown’d with highest praises.

Sam:  I hear the sound of words, thir sense the air
Dissolves unjointed e’re it reach my ear.

Chor:  Hee speaks, let us draw nigh.  Matchless in might,
The glory late of Israel, now the grief;
We come thy friends and neighbours not unknown
From Eshtaol and Zora’s fruitful Vale
To visit or bewail thee, or if better,
Counsel or Consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage
The tumors of a troubl’d mind,
And are as Balm to fester’d wounds.

Sam:  Your coming, Friends, revives me, for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who friends
Bear in their Superscription (of the most
I would be understood) in prosperous days
They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head
Not to be found, though sought.  Wee see, O friends.
How many evils have enclos’d me round;
Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,
Blindness, for had I sight, confus’d with shame,
How could I once look up, or heave the head,
Who like a foolish Pilot have shipwrack’t,
My Vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigg’d; and for a word, a tear,
Fool, have divulg’d the secret gift of God
To a deceitful Woman : tell me Friends,
Am I not sung and proverbd for a Fool
In every street, do they not say, how well
Are come upon him his deserts? yet why?
Immeasurable strength they might behold
In me, of wisdom nothing more then mean;
This with the other should, at least, have paird,
These two proportiond ill drove me transverse.

Chor:  Tax not divine disposal, wisest Men
Have err’d, and by bad Women been deceiv’d;
And shall again, pretend they ne’re so wise.
Deject not then so overmuch thy self,
Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides;
Yet truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder
Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather
Then of thine own Tribe fairer, or as fair,
At least of thy own Nation, and as noble.

Sam:  The first I saw at Timna, and she pleas’d
Mee, not my Parents, that I sought to wed,
The daughter of an Infidel: they knew not
That what I motion’d was of God; I knew
From intimate impulse, and therefore urg’d
The Marriage on; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel’s Deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely call’d;
She proving false, the next I took to Wife
(O that I never had! fond wish too late)
Was in the Vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious Monster, my accomplisht snare.
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end; still watching to oppress
Israel’s oppressours: of what now I suffer
She was not the prime cause, but I my self,
Who vanquisht with a peal of words (O weakness!)
Gave up my fort of silence to a Woman.

Chor:  In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy,
Thou never wast remiss, I hear thee witness:
Yet Israel still serves with all his Sons.

Sam:  That fault I take not on me, but transfer
On Israel’s Governours, and Heads of Tribes,
Who seeing those great acts which God had done
Singly by me against their Conquerours
Acknowledg’d not, or not at all consider’d
Deliverance offerd : I on th’ other side
Us’d no ambition to commend my deeds,
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the dooer;
But they persisted deaf, and would not seem
To count them things worth notice, till at length
Thir Lords the Philistines with gather’d powers
Enterd Judea seeking mee, who then
Safe to the rock of Etham was retir’d,
Not flying, but fore-casting in what place
To set upon them, what advantag’d best;
Mean while the men of Judah to prevent
The harrass of thir Land, beset me round;
I willingly on some conditions came
Into thir hands, and they as gladly yield me
To the uncircumcis’d a welcom prey,
Bound with two cords; but cords to me were threds
Toucht with the flame: on thi

Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame:
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark,
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed and unnamed.

I love you like shrubs that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now thanks to your love an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body’s odors.

I love you without knowing how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care:
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where “I” no longer exists, nor “you” ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.

Keywords/Tags: Neruda, translation, Spanish, love, sonnet, rose, topaz, coral, dark, shadow, obscure, secret, fragrance, hand, chest, eyes, close, dreams



More Pablo Neruda translations ...

You can crop all the flowers but you cannot detain spring.
―Pablo Neruda, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

While nothing can save us from death,
still love can redeem each breath.
―Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As if you were set on fire from within,
the moon whitens your skin.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Please understand that when I awaken weeping
it's because I dreamed I was a lost child
searching the leaf-heaps for your hands in the darkness.
―Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I’m no longer in love with her, that's certain ...
yet perhaps I love her still.
Love is so short, forgetting so long!
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I alone own my darkness.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I own my own darkness, alone.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch






Religión en el Este (“Religion in the East”)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Tom Merrill

I realized in Rangoon:
the gods were our enemies
as much as God;
alabaster gods elongated like white whales;
gilded gods gleaming like golden ears of corn;
serpentine gods coiling around the crime of being born;
naked detached buddhas
smiling enigmatically at cocktail parties,
contemplating pointless eternity
like Christ on his grotesque cross;
all of them capable of any atrocity,
of imposing their heaven upon us;
all armed with implements of torture, or death;
all demanding piety or, better yet, our blood;
avaricious gods imagined by men
to excuse their cowardice, or to conceal it;
gods everywhere, inescapable;
and the whole earth reeking of heaven,
for sale, like merchandise.



In all the languages of men only the poor will know your name.—Pablo Neruda



The Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto VIII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Martin Mc Carthy, who put me up to it

Ascend with me, my American love!

Let’s kiss these mysterious stones together!

The Urubamba’s torrential silver
lures pollen to fly from its golden chalice
while above this canyon’s unbroken silence
everything soars: the climbing grapevines’ fruitless branches,
the shopworn plants, each inflexible garland.

Come, elfin life, test your wings above the earth,
test the cold, crystalline air,
****** the embrittled emeralds aside,
test even these frigid waters, cascading from the icepacks.

Test love, lambent Love itself, until the night's sudden implosion
over the Andes' atlean peaks,
when, reeling on the reddening knees of dawn,
you feast your startled eyes on its snowblind offspring.

Oh Wilkamayu of the sonorous looms,
when you unleash your thunderbursts,
when you crazily rend your thunder’s skeins
leaving gauzy white clouds to bind wounded snow,
when your wild winds whip sheer cliffs into avalanches,
roaring as if to arouse the sky from its sleep,
what language will you awaken at last in the ear,
thus lately freed from your Andean inundations?

Who imprisoned the frigid lightning bolt,
left it chained to these Promethean heights,
scattered its glacial tears,
brandished its mercurial swords,
hammered out the threads of its war-torn stamens,
led it to this warrior's bower
then left it to lie in a rocky fissure?

What do your harried illuminations reveal,
your rebellious lightnings signal?
Must we travel inhibited by words?
Impeded by frozen syllables,
these dark languages, gold-brocaded banners,
fathomless mouths and conquered cries
arising from your silver arterial waters?

Who decapitates lily-like eyelids
from those come to observe the earth’s occupants?
Who scatters dead seeds
flung from your waterfall hands
only to atrophy here
into fossilized coal?

Who flings branches over precipices
only to bury our banal farewells?

On love, Love!, do not approach the boundaries;
avoid idle adoration of sunken heads;
nor let time exhaust all possibilities
in this strange abode of broken overtures;
nor think, between these cascading waters and sheer cliff walls,
to reclaim high mountains’ elevated airs,
nor the wind’s white laminations,
nor the blind canal’s guidance toward high cordilleras,
nor the dew’s brilliant solicitations;
but ascend, blossom by blossom, through the thickets,
clambering up the coiling serpent flung from the crags above.

From this escarpment zone of flint and forest,
from this emerald stardust broken by jungle clearings,
Mantur, the valley, emerges like a living creature
save for its eerie silence.

Ascend to my very being, to my own individual dawn,
even to this higher crown of solitudes.

This fallen kingdom survives in us nonetheless.

While racing across the Andes' sundial the condor's shadow
passes black as a marauder.



For now, I ask no more than the justice of eating.—Pablo Neruda



La Barcarola Termina (“The Watersong Ends”)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is time, love, to sever the somber rose,
to shut off the stars, to re-bury the ashes in earth;
and then, in the insurrection of light, to awake with those who awoke,
lest we continue this dream of reaching the far shore of a sea without shores.



One Pillar
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

One pillar props up consolations,
so please don’t bother telling me anything!
Does the pale metalloid heal you, really?
I have a terrible fear of re-becoming an animal,
of the terrible anger that devolves men to boys.
And after so many words?



Soliloquio en Tinieblas (“Soliloquy at Twilight”)
from Estravagario, 1958
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t you know there’s no one in the streets
and no one inside the houses either? Only eyes in the windows.
If you lack someplace to sleep,
knock on a door and they’ll open it,
but only to a certain point,
and you’ll see that it’s cold inside,
that the house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
because your stories are worthless.
And if you suggest tenderness
the dog and cat will bite you.



Poesía (“Poetry”)
from Memorial de Isla Negra, 1964
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Something transpired in my soul,
a fit of fever or a flurry of wings,
after which I made my way,
deciphering that fire;
finally I wrote the first faint line,
pale, insubstantial, pure nonsense,
or perhaps the pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
then suddenly I saw
the heavens
revealed,
gates flung wide open.



I love you only because I love you
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
Between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates between ice and fire.

I love you only because you’re the one I love;
I hate you deeply, but hatred
Bends me all the more toward you, so that the measure of my variableness
Is that I do not see you, but love you blindly.

Perhaps January’s frigid light will consume my heart with its cruel rays,
robbing me of any hope of peace.

In this tragic plot, I am the one who dies,
Love’s only victim,
And I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, my Love, in fire and blood.



Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp tightly
like a cornucopia, every day, between my hands ...



Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.

I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your ******* like almonds, whole.

I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.

I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.



The Book of Questions
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Is the rose ****
or is that just how she dresses?

Why do trees conceal
their spectacular roots?

Who hears the confession
of the getaway car?

Is there anything sadder
than a train standing motionless in the rain?



In El Salvador, Death
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Death still surveils El Salvador.
The blood of murdered peasants has never clotted;
time cannot congeal it,
nor does the rain erase it from the roads.
Fifteen thousand were machine-gunned dead
by Martinez, the murderer.
To this day the coppery taste of blood still flavors
the land, bread and wine of El Salvador.



If You Forget Me
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I need you to know one thing ...
You know
how it goes:
if I gaze up at the glowing moon,
if observe the blazing autumn’s reddening branches from my window,
if I touch the impalpable ash of the charred log’s wrinkled body ...
everything returns me to you,
as if everything that exists
―all aromas, sights, solids―
were small boats
sailing toward those isles of yours that await me.

However ...
if little by little you stop loving me
then I shall stop loving you, little by little.

And if you suddenly
forget me,
do not bother to investigate,
for I shall have immediately
forgotten you
also.

If you think my love strange and mad―
this whirlwind of streaming banners
gusting through me,
so that you elect to leave me at the shore
where my heart lacks roots,
just remember that, on that very day,
at that very hour,
I shall raise my arms
and my roots will sail off
to find some more favorable land.

But
if each day
and every hour,
you feel destined to be with me,
if you greet me with implacable sweetness,
and if each day
and every hour
flowers blossom on your lips to entice me, ...
then ah my love,
oh my only, my own,
all that fire will be reinfernoed in me
and nothing within me will be extinguished or forgotten;
my love will feed on your love, my beloved,
and as long as you live it will be me in your arms ...
as long as you never leave mine.



Sonnet XLV
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because―
how can I explain? A day is too long ...
and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station
where the trains all stand motionless.

Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because―
then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together,
and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home
will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.

Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf;
may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance.
Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because then you'll have gone far too far
and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth:
Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?



My Dog Died
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My dog died;
so I buried him in the backyard garden
next to some rusted machine.

One day I'll rejoin him, over there,
but for now he's gone
with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose,
while I, the atheist who never believed
in any heaven for human beings,
now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter.

Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel
where my dog awaits my arrival
wagging his tail in furious friendship!

But I'll not indulge in sadness here:
why bewail a companion
who was never servile?

His friendship was more like that of a porcupine
preserving its prickly autonomy.

His was the friendship of a distant star
with no more intimacy than true friendship called for
and no false demonstrations:
he never clambered over me
coating my clothes with mange;
he never assaulted my knee
like dogs obsessed with ***.

But he used to gaze up at me,
giving me the attention my ego demanded,
while helping this vainglorious man
understand my concerns were none of his.

Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd gaze up at me
contentedly;
it was a look he reserved for me alone
all his entire sweet, gentle life,
always merely there, never troubling me,
never demanding anything.

Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail
as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together,
in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward
as my golden-maned friend leapt about,
supercharged by the sea's electric surges,
sniffing away wildly, his tail held *****,
his face suffused with the salt spray.

Joy! Joy! Joy!
As only dogs experience joy
in the shameless exuberance
of their guiltless spirits.

Thus there are no sad good-byes
for my dog who died;
we never once lied to each other.

He died, he's gone, I buried him;
that's all there is to it.



Tonight I will write the saddest lines
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight I will write the saddest lines.
I will write, for example, “The night is less bright
and a few stars shiver in the distance
as I remember her unwarranted light ...”

Tonight I will write her the saddest lines:
that I loved her as she loved me too, sometimes,
all those long, lonely nights when I held her tight
and filled her ears with indecipherable rhymes ...

Then she loved me too, as I also loved her,
compelled by the spell of her enormous eyes.
Tonight I will write her the saddest lines
as I ponder love’s death and our mutual crimes.

Outside I hear night―silent, cold, dark, immense―
as these delicate words fall, useless as dew.
Oh, what does it matter that love came to naught
if love was false, or perhaps even true?

And yet I hear songs being sung in the distance.
How can I forget her, so soon since I lost her?
I seek to regain her, somehow bring her closer.
But my heart has been blinded; she will not appear!

Now moonlight and starlight whiten dark trees.
We also are ghosts, by love’s failing light.
My love has failed me, but how I once loved her!
My voice ... this cursed wind ... what use to recite?

Another’s. She will soon be another’s.
Her body, her voice, her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her! And why should I love her
when love is sad, short, mad, fickle, unwise?

Because of cold nights we clung through so closely,
I’m not satisfied to know she is gone.
And while I must end this hell I now suffer,
It’s sad to remember all love left undone.

THE EUPRAXIA OF  PRISOPTOMETRY SIDELINED BY THE SOPORIFIC PROMACHOS OF ABSOLUTION MIGHT WE CONVENE THE CABOOSE OF ANACUSIC TALENTS FOR SURDOMUTE  REGALIA IN THE MUGIENCE OF  DUGONG BECAUSE OF EXASPERATED DECREES SEEKING TO TRIGGER SARANGOUSTY IN PRIMIPARA PENTAPOLIS THAT ARE SCREWBALL WITH ANTERIC RAGE PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF A HOPSCOTCH MORALISM RATHER THAN A EUHEMERIST LAXISM. DUGONG DUCDAMES OF EISOPTROMANIA AGAINST  THE PODEX PNYX BECAUSE OF TRUTINATED CNICNODES OF SCENOGRAPHY FOR SCAPPLE AND STANNARY PLAGIARIZED FROM THE CLAVATE OF MOST STERLING ELITISM BROCKFACED IN BRONCHOS BECAUSE OF BRADYDACTYL FEATURES  OF TOWERING GIANTS OF THE TADPOLE MACROPTEROUS WINGS OF INSIPID OR ORGANIC ORGANITY IN THE SCHWERMERIE THAT IS A SPANGLED BANNER OF RADICAL TRUISMS OF CATAMOUNT CATALLACTICS AMONG THE CORDWAINERS THAT SWITH WITH COUNTERFOIL BRAZEN IN ALL CARNAPTIOUS FRIZZ AND FOMENT ENDOWED WITH THE FUMATORIUM OF EFFLUVIA UNSPOKEN PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF HACHURES OF DURAMEN AND THE ARGALI OF MEGALOGRAPHY FORSAKING THE OLMS AND ESBATS OF PECCADILLO AND REGAL SECRECY PRIMARILY TO ACCELERATE THE TAGHAIRM. THE ARTIFICE OF RUDENTURE IN MUGIENCE WHEATEN EXASPERATINGLY WITH POIGNANT GRAPPLING-HOOK TENACITY SUCH THAT WHEALS AND  WARDCORNS ARE ZUGZWANGS OF NARRISCHEIT FORMATIVE IN THE PROWESS OF TIRED DROOPY EYES AIMING AT  GEOSELENIC SATURNALIA OF THE PANTOGLOTS OF PARVANIMITY ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE PASILALY OF GUBERNATORIAL REMEMBLES OF REPINE RATHER  THAN OPINION OF SCARAMOUCHES THAT BECOME RAFFISH FOR LAFFY TAFFY JOLLYBOAT JOLLY RANCHERS BECOMING CENTRIFUGAL TO THE MAGNETS THAT ONLY THERBLIGS OF ERGOGRAPHY CAN ESTEEM THE STELLIFIED STELLIONS OF IMMORTAL DEGREES OF CREANCERS BOOMING IN THE SEMPITERNAL FLAGRANT FOUL DELUSIONS OF A CASTRATED DESTINY AGAINST ORTSAC PRIORITIZATION OF A SECURE WORLD OF OCREATED ARCEATION OF ELAPHURES THAT IN UNSEELED RIGMAROLE OF JAUNDICE CREATED AND SUSTAINED BY IMBREVIATED KNAVERY OF BLESBOKS TRYING TO PLAY OPERATIVE CHESS IN A CHECKERED HUBRIS SPANNING THE GAMUT OF SPEED RUN HYPOCRISIES NEVER FULLY FLESHED OUT BECAUSE OF RIBALD CORSAIRS OF COCARDEN. SKELDERS OF SCAZONS OF BRUTAL INTEMERATION OF CARTHAGIAN GLADIATORIAL WRIKPOND WREPOLIS MERGERS OF THE PRIZED ANTIQUITY DEFINED BY SUBERIC VINTNERS OF PLACKIQUE THAT BARNSTORM WITH FERVID SPUMID SPURIA OF THE SCORIAS THAT STARTLE THE STRICKLE SUCH THAT NOT A SINGLE  WAGERED PAXILLOSE STRETCHER EVER FALLS BY THE AERONAUTICS OF ARENAIDAN FORESIGHT CONTUMELY ENAMORS IN SLEDGEHAMMER DEFECTED CRAVEN BRITTLE REDSHORT SELACHOSTOMOUS SEDERUNTS INVOLVED IN THE SENNET OF REGULA BECAUSE OF LAVADERO IVORRIDE. NEVERTHELESS OFTEN OVERRIDED BY EUCRASIA AND BY THE ACCIDIA OF PAST TENSE RIGORS OF CALUMETS ESTRANGED FROM WIDDERSHANCY BECAUSE OF THE CONVENIENT WANCHANCIES THAT WE DEPLORE DESPITE THEIR DISCRETIONARY ADVANTAGES OF GALLOP POLLING GALLOPING HEADLESS HORSEMEN OF THE VERDERER AS THE PERCURRENT CENTURIES ELEVATE DUGONG FOR DIDDICOYS OF ART TO LICENSE THEMSELVES BROADCLOTH MASTERY OF WUNDERKINDS THAT CARESS THE COSSETED COGNOMEN OF THE CORRIGENDA BECAUSE OF THE RIBALD PALLOR OF CRETACEOUS OLASIN EPOCHS OF MACROBIAN SENTIENCE EVOLVED FROM EMOTIVISM TO VOUCHSAFE THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF JOCKO JOBBERNOWL FINFIGUAL NIHILISTS AMBITIOUS TO DEBUNK EVERY THEORY THAT PROVOKES THE POIGNANT TRIBULOID QUALMS OF A RADICAL MURENGER CHARGING MURAGE IN HIS SPRINGHARE OBSESSIONS. IN DOOMSTERS ADEEM WITH SUCCULENT SACCHARINE TONSILECTOMY SUGAR OF APIKOROS NOVANTIQUE SPRAWLING IN EVERY CREATIVE DIRECTION OF FUSIONS OF CREATIVE NUCLEOTIDES THE CENTERPIECE OF A NIMBLE PATRIARCHY WED TO PRIMIPARAS OF MULIEBRITY SUCH THAT GALLANT ARGALI LEAPS OF AUGENDS TOO COMPLEX TO TURBINATE BECAUSE OF TUBIFACIENT LORE SLOGMARCHING INTO URBANE BOWERIES SUCH THAT COUNTERFOIL IS COULROPHOBIC AND THE BALLAST BRONTEUM OF ALL CIVILIZED RANSACKED FOSSORS OF THE MOST ELOQUENT OF TIMES. THE CODSWALLOP ABOUT GERENDUM IN CARELESS HASTY MISTAKES GRANDEVAL GUDGEONS OF GUFF AND GUIGNOL OF RHYPAROGRAPHY AGAINST THE ROENTGENOGRAPHY OF ACCIDENTAL POSTURES OF LOLLIPOP TOOTLES OF TOPGALLANT ROYALTY RESCUED FROM THE SNATCHES OF  ***** DEARTH AND THE ACUMINATION OF ACERSECOMIC URCEOLATE ACHARNE WHICH IS THE WEAPON OF TIROCINIUM TYROS THAT BEBLUBBERED THEIR WAY INTO INTREPID INFAMY AND NOTORIETY BY IGNORANT OVERSTEPS BY LARGESSE IN RACEMATION FOR RHIZOGENIC RADICALISM IN MAXIMALIST MATHEMATICISM PRIMARILY THE SKIRMISH OF SCHMEGGEGY BY THE STANHOPE AUTHORS OF JESUITICAL JANSKY AGAINST BLARING CATACOUSTICS WHICH FILIBUSTER THE DILATORY DESULTORY JAUNT WITH JIGGERY-POKERY WALMS AND WASMS OF ESCALIERS OF ESCULENT ENANTIODROMIA THAT SUFFRAGETTES OF BLOCKHEADED CHOCKABLOCK JAWBREAKERS BETROTHED TO MATRIMONY OF NATIONAL ESTEEM AND JINGOISM SWELTERING IN THE HEYDAY OF ONEIRODYNIA. THIS HAMSTRUNG QUANDARY SADLY STRADDLED IN COMBUVIROUS SPATTEES PRIMARY TO THE HUES OF  CHALKING BRISTLES OF BARBEDWIRE LIES AND SUBLINEATED MAINLINE FRIGORIC FRIGOLABILE RETINACULUM THAT THE SWARF OF HEDERACEOUS IVORRIDE AND THE OCCAMY OF MEHARIS BELONGING TO MEGACERINE FEARS OF HYPOCHRONDRIA BECAUSE OF THE PREVALENT JERBOA DYSCHROA OF SYNAPHEA THAT STARTLE HAPPY ACCIDENTS AT FINISH LINE CAMARRA THAT CATAPULTS THE FILTH EDGY BY COMSTOCKERY THAT THE TAME TENDER LOLLOP OF LONGINIQUITY AND LESSER DEMIURGES WHO FIGHT THE SPECTER OF TIRED ISOLATION SUCH THAT THE PEDESTRIAN IS A SPRINGALD NOTORIETY THAT FIGURES OUT THE WAINAGE OF SAPROSTOMY BECAUSE OF CERBERIC WANIGANS OF THE ULTERIOR GALLIVANT BROCKFACED INTO EVERY TITANISM BY THE DROLLERY OF DROOPY SERRATED EDGES OF CURTAILED CURGLAFF SURROUNDED BY PLASMAS OF AUREATE AURIGRAPHY AGAINST ATOCIA OF THALEROPHAGOUS NEOMORTISM TWISTED INTO WARPED CONTORTIONS OF RHADAMANTHINE DOUBTS. THE ALABASTER ALCOVES DREAMING OVER EVERY HEAVEN IN SONDAGE AND BRISK BRITSKAS OF BANDOBAST BERGAMASKS THAT SPURN THE SPURIOUS SOPHISTRY FOR THE CATALYST OF CLEPSYDRA. THE KATABOTHRON OF KALIMKARI KYMATOLOGY THAT IS SWARTHY SPATHODEA REPUDIATION OF NYALAS OF NAGORS OF NUTATION BECAUSE OF OBLATE BOLAR RANCOR FOR THE CALVERS NEVER OF A CALVOUS LENDRUMBILATION NOR A PANCRATIC ACCORD OF GRAVEDIGGER SERENDIPITIES SCOWLING AT HEADWINDS FROM THE PARAVENTED LAIRWITES OF MOONRAKER JOLTERHEADS WHO EMERGE FROM THE THICKETS OF THE DENSEST ELITISM EVERY MANUFACTURED BY THE HEGEMUNES OF SECULAR RETINUE AND CORTEGES OF THE VENTRAD AND VENTRALABRAL FAMIGERATION BEYOND VENOSTASIS AND AGAINST THE HEARTH OF ATRABILIARY ECCENTRICITIES OF ALIDADE FISTICUFFS. SCOFFLAW MACROPICIDE IN THE TEDIUM OF SWELTERING PARASELENES OF KNIGHTED SQUARSONS SQUARROSE UPON THEIR SQUIRMING SQUALLS OF STRAPONTIN IN INTRORSE SOPHISTICATION MIGHT THE LANGUOR OF EXHAUSTED BEATLES MEET THE TIMESPUN RICHES OF ALL FORESIGHT PRISMATIC UPON HINDSIGHT IN THE CHRONOBIOLOGY OF CARAPACE AND THE REGIMENTATION OF TESTUDO THAT IS A GLAMOR OF AFFLICTION RATHER THAN A BEAST OF CRUCIBLE IGNOMINY FOR MALINGERING GIAOUR ESBATS BENIGHTED BY THEIR OWN PARLOUS PLIGHT IN POIGNANT HEYDAYS OF NEPHROLITH CALCULATED FOR NEPIONIC ENRICHMENT AGAINST NIDOR THAT STRIVES WITH CABRILLA AND CACHALOTS TO PROVIDE AUSTERE REFORMS. THESE NEGATE AUGUST SUPERCALENDAR DIVINITY BESPECKLED BY MONOCLAR SEPHIROTH TAXED BY SYLLABUB LAGGARDS IN THE TRIUMVIRATE OF ULTRAMONTANE GLEE AGAINST BATTLEDORES OF SABOTAGE SPANKING EVERY MONKEY OF MONETIZATION FOR THE ROODS OF MISERICORD TO BECOME PARABOLASTERS FOR NEW WORLD ATTRITION IN ATTINGENT AND ATTEMPERED AURILAVES OF ALGOR AND THE ANACHORIC RESIGNATION OF PENTAPOLIS THAT SQUIREBELL CLORENCE OF NAUCLATIC FAIRGOERS SERENADES AS THE WORLD DEMARCHES FORFENDED AND FORERIGHT OF ALL INDIGNITIES THAT THEY MIGHT EXCEED ESCAPE VELOCITY SUCH THAT THE ELASTANE ELASTICITY OF INVENTED DEMAND SHOWCASES THE DUGONG DURAMEN OF THE CLASS AND CLASSIFIED SECTORS OF SALVATION BY ARTIFICE AND THE LAST HOPE OF JANIZARIES OF JANGADA. AND TO STROLL PAST LUCRATIVE BUT SULLEN LOURS OF PARKS BEYOND EVERY ESCARGATOIRE KNOWN FOR POGROMS OF DESOLATION. THE ALFORGE OF AFFOREST BECAUSE OF THE ACRASIA OF ANACHORIC LIVING LIVID NIGHTMARES OF HENPECKS OF ATTRITION LEADING TO SALIFIED SALMAGUNDI IN PARALLAX WITH THE TRIUMPHANT BLARE OF SAXHORNS NOTAPHILY FLUMMOXES WITH REPARTEE IN RESCRIPT THAT TRANSCENDENTAL TWINGES OF POLLARCHY MIGHT DISHEVEL THE ARRONDISSEMENT OF BLETTONISM BECOMING HEAPSTEADS OF HYPOGEIODY. WHEN WE ARRAY AND ARRAIGN THE ZEITGEIST FOR ITS BLENCH AND BLARNEY OF CAPSIZED EPITHETS AIMED AT VOLUMINOUS FLUMINOUS SKELDERS AND BROOKS OF ROARING TEMBLORS SEQUESTRATED FROM THE VARSAL SCOPE OF HUMANE TOTEMISM IN SUBSTRATOSE AGGRIEVEMENT WE MIGHT FIND THE SUCCOR IS THE WHITTAWER OF WOOLD IN BEAMISH HUES OF SATURNINE BETROTHED FIDELITIES TO NOCTIDIURNAL DIESTRUS FRAGRANT WITH TERPSICHOREAN DAVERING DIPPYDOS WHO BLANDISH THE FRANGIBLE PULVERIZED METTLE OF CENTURIONS AND LEGIONNAIRES OF FILIBUSTERED CASEFIED CASEMATE JORDANS BOUND BY JOUGS OF JUDOGI AND THE BROADCLOTH FASHIONS OF YASHIKIS BEYOND THE THERMOSTAT OF ISOLATION AND THE THERMODYNAMICS OF LABILE OPPRESSION FOR LABROMANCY BECAUSE OF LANCINATION. WE MIGHT GRANT STOMACHERS A GRAND AUDISM OF THE SERVILE POTAMOLOGY WHICH CARESSES THROUGH COUNTERFOIL WITH APOLAUSTIC PEDIGREE AND EUMOIREITY INGRAINED IN THE CELLULOID OF TIMELESS CUCULINE AND CUNICULOUS FERRETS AT THE PARAPET OF BRISURE BECAUSE OF THE BRIQUETS OF NOMOGENY WE SEE THE PRESBYTERY SMIRK AT THE PLIGHT OF THE STRIGINE IN AN ERA OF HEYDAYS OF GENEROUS REMUNERATION BLANKETED BY A CHIONABLEPSIA DEFINED BY CHIMINAGE OF OXYGEUSIA SUCH THAT THE NEMESISM OF NOETIC NOOGENESIS IS NEVER NIDIFUGOUS AND NIDAMENTAL WITH RESPECT TO BARRULETS ABOUT BANDOLIERS IN THE CHAPERONED CEREMONIALISM OF THE GRAND INSPECTOR GENERAL’S SOVEREIGNTY WELL BLACKGUARDED BY KILLCOWS SEEKING STOICHOLOGY AND SYNECHIOLOGY. MIGHT THEY SLAVER OVER POTENT TONICS OF SWAG AND SWAGGER FOR REDINTEGRATION IN HYPAETHRAL HEIGHTS OF ATHENAEUM FOR THE HAMARCHY EMERGENT FROM THE DAWN OF NOTAPHILY IN BLOCKBUSTER SUMMERS NIGHT DREAMS BECOMING RANCID NIGHTMARES OF GULLYWASHERS OF ANTEBELLUM RECIDIVISM FOR CANEZOUS OF CANZONE TO ESTABLISH THE CHRYSOPOEITICS OF A GALVANIZED VENOCLYSIS BECAUSE VARIMAX VARIPHONES UPON THE HYDRAHEADED ODYSSEY OF PRINCELY FANDANGLES FROWARD IN RABID DENIAL OF TAMARAWS ENLISTED BY INSTINCT AND DEPREDATED BY THE TORPOR OF LETHARGIC AIMLESSNESS FOR LUDIC PALUDISM SADLY THE SPITE OF ALL PIRANNHAS COWLING AND COWERING IN SHEEPISH SIMULTAGNOSIA FOR HETEROCHRONY AND THE ARYAN ASSENT AND ASCENDANCY OF THE EQUITABLE TINTINNABULATION OF KNELLING SESQUIPEDALIAN SYBOTIC SONDAGE LOST TO THE MESMERISM OF YESTERTEMPEST OVER THE YUAN OF YENTA.  THE FORMIDABLE JAPAN LACQUER THAT AVOIDS GARISH TARNISH AND HARNESSES THERBLIGS TO PREVENT ENCROACHED THALWEGS OF INTREPID GROWTH AND THE FLOWERS OF MAY AND THE SEASONS OF A ZOMBIE TIME FOR PULCHRITUDE IN PHANTASMAGORIA. TURGID TURMOIL OF THROMBOSIS WELDED TO THE WELD OF  WELKINS OF WALLFISH WALLETEERS BECAUSE OF STRADOMENTRICAL NEUTROSOPHY IN OPTIMIZATION OF SUBFOCAL SUBINTELLIGENTUR FOR THE BALISAURS THAT TREACLE THE SUBSERVIENCE OF CREATIVE LICENTIATES OF DUGONG OF FURLOUGHS OF POVERTY-STRICKEN OLASIN REGISTRIES OF INTERMINABLE PRESTIGE AGAINST COMBUVIROUS FOGRAM RECAPITULATIONS OF THE FLOW STATES OF SEGUE SUCH THAT HUCKSTERS OF MASKIROVKA IN THE WHIGGARCHY AMOUNTED TO MANY COMPRACHIOS THAT STING THE STALWART SPARTAN STOICISM AGAINST HEBENON MIGHT THE HUMAN PEN OUTWIT THE PARCHMENT OF THE INVETERATE BIAS OF GRANDFATHER PARADOX PARALLAX BETWEEN HEAVEN AND THE DENEHOLE MOULINS FOR OLIVASTER NEUSTONS AND NOILS SURVIVING THE VIRTUALASIS OF TWADDLED TWANGS OF  DELIRIFACIENT PERIBLEBSIS SQUEAMISH BECAUSE OF A RIGMAROLE AND RABBIT HOLE WORMCAST WORMHOLE BURROLE OF ROTTEN APPLES TACKLED BY WREST AND WREATH IN THE WROX OF WHEALS OF COMMOTION AND LOCO LOCOMOTIVE ENGINES FRAZZLED BY SPIVS AND SPAVINEDS IMMURED INTO THE FABRIC OF THE SPANDRELS OF  INTERTESSELATED WEIGHAGE AMONG THE STEVEDORES AND PORTREEVES. THESE CONTINUE THEIR ROLLICKING  MAGPIETY GALLOP AGAINST THE FRICTION OF RUMCHUNDER COAGULATION SERRATED TRAVAIL  OF THE DYSTOCIA OF GAMMERSTANG BLUEPETERS ENRAGED BY CONFLAGRATIONS OF CAMARADERIE AND BONFIRES OF GEZELLIG THAT INDWELL INGLENOOKS SWAPE WITH MAJORITARIAN ETHOS TO PROPITIATE THE GAVELKIND CELEBRATION OF ROOSTERS HENPECKING  THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION AGAINST THE REAL ESTATE DEGRINGOLADE OF PHUGOID GROUNDPROX SWIRKS OF CHOSEN VESICLES OF MEDIOCRITY BETWEEN BLARING  SEMAPHORES AND FIRECRACKER WISEACRES THAT ARE AN ENDLESS PARADE OF INSULTED CONTUMACY BREATHING SWELTERING SIGHTS OF INCREDULITY SUCH  THAT THE BRONCHITIS OF ROENTGENOGRAPHY IN GNOTOBIOLOGY MIGHT BECOME BETTER THAN PETTY GALEANTHROPIES FROM VULPECULAR HENCHMEN OF THE FROTHY TAMBURITZAS AGAINST WHERRETS BECAUSE OF WHIFFETS OF THE YAFF THAT IS ASTRIDE OF ADEEMED ADEMPTION OF DETAIL HARANGUING THE MONKEY BUSINESS GORDON GECKO MODEL OF HACHURE AND FLAGRANT  REPOSE. THE  HANDSPIKE OF PICKELHAUBE NEPHELOMETERS OF NEUTROSOPHY PREDICATES TO NOETIC NOMOTHETIC ENNOMIC MASCON PREROGATIVES THAT RELY ON GEITONOGAMY BECAUSE OF A VULPECULAR TRUST IN SPHENOGRAMS OF THE STUPE OF STUPULOSE PARTISANSHIP BECOMES THE VANGUARD SPIRACULATED IZZAT OF THE PROBABLE PORBEAGLES THAT ANTICIPATE THE ILLUMINISM OF POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE PROCREATION OF NUBILE INCHOATE BUT SOPHOMORIC TROPISMS FOR TROMOMETERS IS THE GAINSAY OF ALL GENERATIONS BENT BY SYNCLASTIC HARPOONS OF GALERICULATED FOCUS SUCH THAT THE MASCARONS OF KYMATOLOGY UNDERSTAND THE CTETOLOGY OF CURMURRING PRODROMES OF A LARGESSE ECONOMY BUILT ON MOONRAKER BALISAURS WHO IMMERGE THEMSELVES INTO THE ETHEREAL  REALM OF ELDRITCH FASCINATIONS.  PREEMINENT IN THE GARBLED GABBLE OF DESIGN AND THE TABLATIERES OF THE TABLATURE OF REGULA MIGHT WE WITNESS A NAUFRAGUE NOYADE WHICH SPARES THE MOST CLEMENCY AND AFFORDS THE GREATEST FORCES OF REVALORIZATION TO ENNOBLE THE PRESTIGITATION OF SEDIGITATED MACHINES SUCH THAT TIME BECOMES ITS OWN RECURSIVE ANFRACTUOUS TERMINUS TO THE THERMOLYSIS OF ALL CIVILIZED TROPES OF METAPHORICAL LITURGY THAT SCAMPER THE TESTUDO INTO THE DELITESCENCE OF HIDDEN BOSCHVELDT SCRANCHES OF PRIORITY BY SECURITIZATION OF ALL OVERLEVERAGED FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS OF MATHEMATICISM FOR THE APOTHEGMS OF OUR AGE TO BE BLINKERED BY COCARDEN IN ACRONYCAL COLORATIONS TO BEGUILE AND SUSSULTATORY SPATTEES FOR SCAPPLES AGAINST SPAVINEDS OF THE BERLINE INVENTION. THE GALLANT ELAPID OLASIN EPOCH OF CIVILIZED RUDIMENTS OF ABECEDARIAN ABDERVINE MERIT THAT AVOIDS THE CODSWALLOP OF ALL BOLAR STADIOMETERS OF WANIGANS OF  POWELLISATION THAT BECOMES VIRTUOSITY IN AGATHISM THAT IS SPECULAR IN BLEMISH AND SHEEPISH OVER VAUNTED VAUNTLAYS OF VECORDY BY  THE METHODOLOGY OF VASTATION. THE UNINTENTIONAL SCURFY SWANK OF BALATRONS OF BAISEMAN WHO CARVE THE SYSTEMIC DESIGN OF SANGFROID AGAINST GALERES WHO USE THE STOMACHERS OF  THEIR OWN PALATABLE FILIGREES THAT WE MIGHT NEVER ENTHUSE THE GOURMANDS OF TIROCINIUM TRUCULENT RATHER THAN SWASHBUCKLING WITH VANITARIAN BUMICKY BADIGEON TO REPAIR THE REVETS OF THE CHEVROTAIN OF YOUTHQUAKE THAT JANITRICES OF JANSKY SWOONING ON THE ENGORGED WREPOLIS OF GARBLED MISCEGENATION OF WARTORN IGNOMINY THAT TRAVESTY APPOINTS THE BELLWETHER OF ALL JUBALS GRAND INVENTIONS BECAUSE WE REMIGATE THE SCALARIFORM CORDWAINER NOMENCLATURE TO SHOULDER DISHEVELED RATOMORPHISM THAT BELONGS TO AGROZIATRY BECAUSE OF  THE PREVALENCE OF URANOPLASTY IN GLABROUS OR HIRSUTE ARTS OF GEOSELENIC ACCORD THAT CALUMETS OF WALDFLUTES IN THE SONDAGE OF CRUEL COMPRACHIO AVIZANDUM IN THE BYRES OF BUSHWA IN NONSENSICAL COUNTERPATRIOTISM TRYING TO HEDGE MALAISE WITH IVORY TOWER CREEDS OF CREDENDA FOR THE VISIOGENIC APLOMB OF CIRCULARITY OR ELLIPSIOCITY IN THE GRAVAMENS OF GRAVITAS. IN THE VERVE AND FASHION OF KNEAD MALAXAGE FOR THE MITTIMUS OF SUCCEDANEUM WE FIND THE PETTY FAULTS OF PECCADILLO ENRAGED BY IGNOVIMOUS IGNOSCENY TO BE IDEMPOTENT IN SEDIGITATED  SEGUIDILLA OF WILLOWISH FASHIONISTAS AND BARRISTERS OF CABOOSE AND SNARE. THEREBY, SPECTACLES OF GRAFT BUSHWHACK THE UNDERBRIDGE OF RECTISERIAL HOMILIES OF WOUNDED WOMBS THAT THE SUFFRAGE OF PROMACHOS TRITANOPIA OFFSET BY CONTRARIAN PROTANOPIA MIGHT FESTOON LUKEWARM REVANCHE FOR THE  DYSANIA TO OUR OWN FAULTED COMPLEXIONS AND OUR QUIRKY QUISQUILOUS STERNWAYS OF BANDOBAST STRICTURES IN BAGGING COAMING COBALTIFEROUS VINEGAROONS OF PICKELHAUBE PORBEAGLES OF MENACING RESIDUE TO CHURN THE MILKY SEAS OF CONTRITION INTO FORMIDABLE BASTIONS OF PHAROS OF PHANOPEIA WHEN WE FIND THE OUTSKIRTS OF ALL REMEDY NEVER A SHEEPISH EMBARRASSMENT BUT ALWAYS A DOCTORED TRAVAIL OF NAVARCHY LEADING PAST TEMBLORS OF SATIETY IN GLAMOUR AND GLOZING GNOTOBIOLOGICAL CONFEDERACY SWOONING WITH TESTUDOS OF BOYAU PROXENETES THAT WE MIGHT OVERCOME THE THRUSH AND SLEDGE OF DREDGED IRENARCHS AND INFAMIES BECAUSE OF TRICOTEES AND TRICHOSIS THAT CEPHALIGATION IS AN UNNECESSARY NODALITY OF NICCOLIC NIDAMENTAL NANCIFUL NUMBATS WHO ESCORT THE PASTIMES OF CHOMAGE BY METEORIC SPRITES OF SPALDING ASPHETERISM BECAUSE OF CORPORATE TWINGES OF MORAL CONSCIENCE IN REGARD TO PROFICUOUS LEGERDEMAIN AND LOGODAEDALY BY DEGREES OF PYCNOSTYLE RATHER THAN PALTRY OBSESSIONS WITH WROTH AND WROX IN THE NEIGHS OF CHIRK AND CHAMPION. THE GYMNURE OF PRICKLY TRIBULOID SCANDALS OF  SCANSORIAL MOULINS FOR OLIVASTERS BURROLING STANNARIES OF  STANJANT FOR HISTRINKAGE SPANS ALL PERCEIVED GAMUTS OF HETEROCHRONY THAT DISHEVELED RESIDENT ADVISOR SOCIETIES THAT INTUITIVE SURGICAL SOLUTIONS TO THE GNOMIC PROPRIETY OF GLAZED POTVALIANT POSTCENNIUM THAT  PREDICATE THE AGATHISM OF AGATHOCACOLOGICAL DISASTERS THAT IN THEIR FLEX OF SUPREMACY AND THEIR LEAPING PAGEBURNING FLIPPANT DISCORD MIGHT ZITHER THE HARP AND IN HARPSICHORDS OF WALDFLUTE BY WALLETEERS OF GROOM AND GALLANTRY. MIGHT WE FATHOM THE HOLOBENTHIC DIMENSIONS OF A LITURGY OF MAGNANIMITY CODIFIED BY STRICTURE RATHER THAN RELEGATED INTO AUXILLIARY COMPLICATIONS OF BYZANTINE MIRED MAZY MAUNDERS OF MARAUDING VIKINGS OF DIPPOLDISM BECAUSE OF RAPID TACHYTELIC TACHYPHRASIA STUDIED BY ORGANUELLE AND RHADAMANTHINE RASPS OF WASPY HORNETS NEST MIKE BOSSY BOSE FOR THE STRANDED ISLAND OF INSULAR HOBBYHORSES THAT MONETIZE THEIR OWN CONSUMER FETISHES FOR THE ZAP OF FRUITION TO MANIFEST IN DESTINED TRAIPSES IN COLLARBONE VESTMENTS OF HABILIMENTS OF SCORN AND PILLORIED IGNOMINY THAT THE HIDDEN GUILT ASSUMES THE SPECTRAL DIMENSIONS OF PALTRIPOLITAN URBANE COQUETRY GROWING ROARING ENGINES BEYOND PRETEXT OR PREVARICATION TO SUBSUME THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CONSTELLATIONS AROUND WHICH MAROONED MOONS SEEK THEIR GEOPHYTES OF MORPHOGENY IN RACKRENT ACERBATION IN SPHACELATED METROPOLIS . THIS IS DEFINED IN RETROGRADE MOTION TO DISCERN ALL PROPER RECIPIANGLES FROM THE MASTERATE TO THE MATACHINS OF MELODIKON FRAZZLING THE FRAYS AT THE EDGE OF REVOLUTE DISINTEGRATION OF LACK VANISH IMAGINATION. THE BLEND OF GUILLOCHE DEMARCHING BEYOND DELOPES IN PRAXEOLOGY ENTOMBED BY VESTIGIAL FOOTPRINT DACTYLOGRAMS AND KINDERGRAPHS OF FLASHBANG GRENADES OF SMOKY HARNESS AND REPLETE HARVESTS OF THE RADICAL STALINISM DEFEATED BY MARINERS OF  THE MAROONED POGROMS THAT REVANCHE DESOLATION VANDYKE PROXENETES OF STATURE USE VASTATION FOR RHEOTAXIS AND UNDERSTAND THE RACKETEERING OF MORAL PERJURY IN OBOLARY HEDONISM SCRUFF IN DANDRUFF ECONOMETRICS DIVORCED FROM LEVERAGED BALANCE SHEETS WITH CASH ON HAND FOR GOVERNING PRINCIPLES OF ASCENDANT LITURGY RATHER THAN NESCIENT OLIGOPSONY OF BANGTAIL ARTIFACTS OF BEGUILED ARTIFICE ESTRANGED FROM MORAL DOGMATISM USEFUL IN ECCLESIOLATRY. PUNDONORS OF IVRESSE DERIVED FROM PRECISE IAMATOLOGY OF AUDILE ARYANS GHAWAZIS ENVY IN THEIR RACKRENT BEATSTERS ADEEM BECAUSE OF ACHARNE WIELDLESS OVER ERAS OF EPHORIZED ZOOLOGICAL MALCONTENTS OF GRAMPUS IN TRUCIDATION AND BARNSTORMS OF ABSTRACTION BY PARABOLAS RECOCTED AND INCENSED BY THEIR BETRAYAL OF SURDS AND SURDOMUTE SCRIVELLOS SUCH THAT AUGENDS ALWAYS CARRY ENUMERATED STRINGS OF STRING THEORY DECIMATION OF MINIMIZED TRACTION FOR EVERY LAGGARD HOBBLED WORKADAY MANTLEPIECE OF NUMBERED NOMOGENY BECAUSE THE NEKTON IS A GRAVER THREAT TO TROMOMETERS THAN IS THE CHIRKED SWAY OF PALM TREE OASES ON THE VERGE OF VERDERERS GROOMED BY RANGING PLAINS OF CHAMPAIN AND CHAMPERTY IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE STRUGGLES OF VOLITION AGAINST CURTAILED CURGLAFF BY BRACKISH INCALESCENCE FOR WHITTAWERS OFTEN BEREAVED BY THEIR OWN HUBRIS OF A MOMENTARY VICISSITUDE OR VRAISEMBLANCE OF VORTICISM LACKING VOLTINISM BECAUSE OF UNIVOLTINE TRESPASS. THE PULICIDE OF HAECCEITY WITH RESPECT TO QUANTIFIABLE QUALIA TRANSPOSED IN BLINKERED RHABDOS AND REPINED REMEMBRANCE OF THE SOVENANCE OF WUNDERKIND YOUTHQUAKES BORNE FROM WINTERBOURNE SPRINGS DESICCATED FROM WELLSPRING  FOUNTAIN PENS WORTHY OF SCRIPTURAL REMIGATION SUCH THAT THE OLIM ARE PERSECUTED BEYOND ALL MANNER OF DEMARCATION SUCH THAT TWINGES OF HOROSCOPES MELLIFEROUS IN VEXILLILOGY GRASPING EVERY PENITENT ITCH IN EVERY WEIGHAGE OF THE CUSTODY OF SOULS THAT SUDDENLY THE TRAULISM OF MODALISM IN MODULATED STEPWISE RECOURSE OF BECHIC AND BEDAZZLED MYTHS OF HADEHARIA BECAUSE OF IMPLODENT EVENTS OF PREDICATE VALOR ONLY IN THE PRESCRIBED ANOINTMENT OF DIRECTIVE ABOVE DIMINUTIVE REGELATIONS OF BREVET AND THE CACHES THAT SURMOUNT TITANIC AND HERCULEAN TASKS WITH THE GREATEST OF EASE BECAUSE OF THE NODALITIES OF SYNERGY IN CEPHALIGATION DESIGNED BY ENCAUSTIC MANDATES OF NOMOTHETIC NOOGENESIS THAT SERTIVINES BELONGING TO JABIRU TRIBESMEN MIGHT TROUNCE EVERY LOLLYGAG OF PRALLTRILLER PRAGMATISM PRIMARILY BECAUSE THE PROVENANCE OF ALL HORTORIGINALITY RELIES ON EMOTIVISM FUNNELED THROUGH SIPHONS OF CAFFEINATED LAVADERO SUCH THAT THE SUTLERS OF  SECTILE ECONOMIES CONTINUE THEIR PLOUGHSHARES OF DEADSTOCK MIGHT IMPINGE ON QUALITATIVE GOLD FOR QUANTITATIVE HOGWARTS METHODS OF SORCERY ABOVE VEILLEUSES OF TRAMPOLINE REVERB THAT OUR BRONCHOS IN THE  RELEGATION OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE IS THE UTMOST TRAVESTY OF RIMOSE RANKLES UPON TRIDENT SEAS TRAVERSED BY ACHILLES MOONSHOT ORBITED SATELLITE EXURBIA. THE PUTCHERS OF FRIGOLABILE VANDYKES OF VASTATION IN JASPERATED JARVEYS FOR FROWARD BARTONS OF PANMIXIA IN A WORLD LESS ACCOLENT AND MORE NOTORIOUS FOR ITS FAILED CHIVALRIES OF PEDERASTY SCHLEPED ON THE DENOUEMENT OF ALL DELIVERABLE COMMODITIES OF CREATIVE BRINKMANSHIP BROOKING THE TRAVESTY OF TURNVEREINS OF GRAMERCY AND VISIOGENIC VISIBILIA IN THE VETANDA OF TABOO STIGMATA FROM THE URCHINS THAT SWERVE INTO ABYSS AND ABANDON FOR LACHRYMOSE INSISTENCE OVER TIME INEXORABLE SUCH THAT THE FLUX AND FLOW OF CRYPTODYNAMISM STRICKLED THE COAGULATION OF BONNYCLABBER WASES OF WAPENTAKE TO EDGE TRUMP TO ELECTORAL STAMPEDES IN ITS HONEST VALOR AND MAJORITARIAN RALLENDORK OF ULTIMATE SYNCHRONICITY SUCH THAT GODS PREROGATIVES WERE OBEYED. THE UMBELS OF VERTIGO DEPENDENT UPON THE APOSTILS OF HOARDED HOARY WIZENED GRAY AGING REVOLUTE FRAYS OF SURDOMUTE RATOMORPHISM OUTSMARTS TITANS WHEN THE NODALITIES OF THE NOILS OF CEPHALIGATION FORMATIVE IN THE DURESS OF EFFICIENT ECONOMIES REACHES SUCH AN APOGEE AND ACME OF THE ULTION OF THE INANIMATE AGAINST MACROBIAN SENTIENCE MIGHT WE MARVEL AT THE SUBROUTINES OF THE GLOZING GLOTTOGONIC GNOTOBIOLOGY OF SEMAPHORES IN A VAGANTES VACUUM OF THE VASTATION BY VAPULATION FOR THE LAMBENT LAZARETS OF EPOMANIA BECAUSE OF STRIDOR AND STRAIN WE FIND OURSELVES IN GINGLYMUS ARRAYED AROUND GENIUS SUCH THAT HOLOCRYPTIC HOLMS AND OREAD NYMPHS FREQUENTING THE LABORIOUS INDUSTRIALIZATION OF HUMAN IMAGINATION WE FIND THE MAROON OF THE HUMAN TALENT FACTORY OF FACTOTUMS TO BE ENDANGERED BY AURILAVES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WHICH SURPASS ALL LIMITS OF CONDIGN HUMAN MELANCHOLY BECAUSE OF MERCURIAL VENGEANCE OF VENDETTAS THAT SEEK AGATHISM RATHER THAN TERROR AND NOTORIETY RATHER THAN CENTRIFUGES OF THE LISTLESS AND USELESS RETINUE OF VESTIGES OF WOODSHEDDED WOONERFS BELEAGUERED BY BRIMSTONE AND THE DAMNATION OF A HYDROELECTRIC SYSTEM OF RELUMED LOURS OF SOFT MARAUDING LIGHT OF THE TWADDLING DANCES OF THAUMATURGY IN THE MIRACULOUS AFTERBIRTH OF THE MOST SECURE VARDLES BECOMING THE MOST DESPISED ARTIFACTS IN THE HISTORY OF LABOR BY HOFFA TACTICS IN UNDERHANDED MUGIENCE OF NEGOTIOSITY FRUSTRANEOUS TO ALL FLICKERING FIZZGIGS OF SODA POP GENERATIVITY PUNCTUATING CENTURIES WITH CONSUMERIST PLIGHTS OF ADDICTION BY THE LABARUM OF THE LORD RATHER THAN THE WHIMS AND CAPRICE OF ANEMOCRACY. WE ARE OUTFOXED AND AT THE SURRENDER OF THE DACOITAGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE STORMING FORWARD LIKE A BLITZKREIG TEMPEST MET WITH THE ANGARY PETTIEST  RESISTANCE OF PETTIFOGGERS AS THE PANTECHNICONS OF THE FUTURE CONVENE UPON THE GOLDMINES OF KATABOTHRON AND SYRINX WHICH IS A JOCKO JOLLYBOAT FOR FULMINATION IN CHIMNEYS OF ORPHANS THAT LEAD US TO  THE PRECIPICE OF TOMORROW THAT ONE DAY WE MIGHT BE DUMBFOUNDED BY OUR OWN ANAPEIRATIC EXCESSES OF ALGEDONIC IMBALANCE BECAUSE AURILAVES OUTNUMBER COMSTOCKERIES AND WE FIND OURSELVES FISSILE VEES BURIED IN THE HEAPSTEAD OF THE BULGUR OF BUDDLING TIMMYNOGGIES THAT ARE SEMPERVIRENT BECAUSE THE IMMORTELLE IS ESSENTIAL QUIDDITY IN QASIDA AND QUERENCIA ABOUT DROOPING EYELIDS OF LOUR AND LEER BY LEARY DESIGNS OF TUNE IN TURN ON AND DROP OUT SOCIETIES OF EPIPHENOMENA RATHER THAN SOLID ENGRAVING ON THE TABLATURES OF MIGHTY MACHINATIONS AMONG INTELLIGENT ROBOTIC HENCHMEN OF THE DEEP STATE WHICH SCURRILOUSLY SCARE ALL PUSILLANIMOUS FIFTH COLUMNISTS AWAY FROM GEOTHERMAL POWER BECAUSE OF ECCENTRIC OBSESSIONS WITH THE TALISMAN OF THE SORCERY OF MODERN WORD CRIMES MONETIZED INTO PRIGGISH LAPSE AND CRENELLATED ROYALTY BYPASSED BY ABORIGINAL SPITES OF PRISON COLONY PREROGATIVES THAT THE AVARICE OF MAMMON IS THE MANIFEST DESTINY OF ALL GORDON GECKO FLEAS WHICH HERDS THE CANINE SENSIBILITIES OF THE CAMARILLA AHEAD OF THEIR NEAREST COMPETITORS OF MAINPERNOR. THE INFERIAE OF DUGONG DIDDICOYS OF DAMSEL IN DISTRESS VIRTUALASIS TETHERED TO THE CORDSLAVE BOLAR ENCHANTMENTS OF BLEAK DREARY HUES OF FUTURE DYSTOPIA MAGNIFIED BY ALPENGLOW VISAGISTS THAT PARLAY ALL WRIKPOND WREPOLIS TAMBURITZA FORTUNES AGAINST THE WHERRETS THAT SOCKDOLAGERS OF HERCULEAN BETS MAKES IMPROBABLE MIGHT THE CAGOULES BE TERRIFIED THAT THE MURAGE OF THEIR ANTIQUATED CASTLES OF CRENELLATED PREJUDICE MIGHT COLLAPSE INWARD AND IMPLODENT UPON AN ARCEATED WORLD THAT TARGETS DEFICIENCY AND SOLVES THE STATOLITHS OF NESTITHERAPY WITH A GREGARIOUS INSOUCIANCE BECAUSE OF NEWFANGLED INTERRAMIFICATIONS OF MAN TRYING TO KEEP PACE WITH THE IMAGINATIVE ****** OF BALBRIGGAN TECHNOLOGIES WHICH ARE COVERT IMPLEMENTS OF NIVELLATION AND ENTHYMEMES OF UMLAUT PROVIDING AN ANTIPANGAMY OF PANEGOISM AND PANDATIONS THAT BLUR A GAUSSIAN SPHERE INTO COMPOSITE COMPONENTS DEMASSIFIED BY ADVANCED ASTROPHYSICS IN THE QUANTULATION OF INEVITABLY SUPREME NUMERICAL HEIGHTS OF IMPOSSIBLE REACH ONLY ABRIDGED BY THE HUBRIS OF PROSTHESIS BECAUSE OF THE ABDERVINE MERIT OF A WORLD BRONZED WITH SWORDS OF DOUBLE-SIDED SHEATHES OF STEELING EYES AND STEWARDS OF OLYMPIC CABOOSES IN MARATHON TRANCE SETS FOR THE WALDGRAVES OF THE NOBILITY OF CANQUE BUILT BY JORDANS TO SURMISE THE YARAKS AGAINST YIRDS THAT CARNIFICINE ALBATROSS AND EAGLE FETCHES EVERY SQUARED COMPASS AND EVERY HEDGED GYMNURE THAT WE MIGHT PROPEL OURSELVES BEYOND GAUDY MACHINATIONS OF LIONIZED INUREMENT TO THE RAGGED HETERONORMATIVE EXCESSES OF A PHILANDERED ESCULENT PARVANIMITY ENDANGERED BY VARSAL PERSPECTIVES OF VITRAIL PROPHECIES SEEING THE TURTLEBACK FREEZE IN HYPOTHERMIA LIKE A JACK DAWSON SUNSET INTO THE CRUEL ABYSS OF NIGHT BY KNIGHTED DEGREES ABAFT OF THE SCHWERPUNKT THAT MESMERIZES AGAINST THE CHOANIDS OF SARANGOUSTY A MAGNETISM OF THERBLIGS AND ERGASIAS THAT SURREALISM COVETS AND PRAGMATISM ABSOLVES WITH ABLUTION AND BLUNT TORPOR BECAUSE OF AVENGED SEVENFOLD BATMAN CORDWAINERS OF CODSWALLOP AND CURMUDGEON BECAUSE TIME IS ITS OWN CUCULINE BEHEST OF ORGANITY IN THE BUSHWAS OF THE MOST ABSURD BEING THE LABILE IMAGINATION AND VORTICISM OF ALL CONTRARIAN MOVEMENTS AGAINST SOLIDARITY AND TOWARDS INTREPID BALKANIZATION. ORIBIS OF ORICHALC SHANTUNG BECAUSE THE BLESBOKS ARE INCULCATED ON THEIR HAUTEUR OF JAUNDICE PRIMARY TO THEIR ANTITHESIS TO MODERN SURGING SWELLS OF SPUMID FROTH BETROTHED TO THE ELEGAIC HEARSES THAT TRANSPORT THE LIVING REMNANT OF THE DEAD REVENANT AMONG THE LITURGY OF MEN ABOVE THE CURGLAFF OF GODS WICKED SPITE EVEN IN HIS PERFECT  MAJESTY WE SPURN THE REDACTION OF PEREMPTORY CALCULUS OF IATROMATHEMATICS BECAUSE OF MUTUALISM IN AUDISM THAT IS FORSIFAMILIATED FROM FEWTERERS AND GRAUNCHERS OF JOLTERHEAD JANGADAS SURROUNDED BY ARMIES OF JANIZARIES SEEKING TO ABRIDGE THE TENURE OF THE GROVELING GRIPES OF ESCAPADE AND ESCARGATOIRE BECAUSE OF PAST POGROMS THAT SLAYED THE DRAGOONING FORCES OF DEMASSIFIED CARNAGE IN WAR THAT THE CAMARRA MIGHT BE AVENGED PENNYWISE BECAUSE OF RAPTORS CROONING LOUD SONGS FOR THE ETERNAL REGISTRY AND CADASTER OF HEAVEN MIGHT IN SEDERUNTS OF SYBOTIC SYCOMANCY THAT THE PENULTIMATE DEGREE OF PROMACHOS ELEUTHEROPOMANIA SLEEKLY NAVIGATE EVERY NAIVETY SUCH THAT NO IMPLODENCE OF PIRANNHAS CAN EVER CAPSIZE OUR TITANIC VESICLES OF VENDANGE IN ASPHETERISM. AND, BECAUSE OF ARROGATION IN THE PALACES OF THE THRONE AND THE CRANING CULPRITS OF WEGOTISM THAT BECAME THE ORGULOUS OF CENTIPEDE CONTRACTS CONTRAHENT TO JAPANESE TOILET ASSEMBLY LINE CRAFTY DIVERGENCE FROM AUTOSOTERISM IN OUR TECHNOLOGICAL EMPIRES OF ENTROPY CURVED AROUND THE PARABOLAS OF GOOD WILL HUNTING VENATICS AND VENDIBLE RACEMATION OF LASSITUDE PRONOUNCED IN THE HEARTH OF ABODES OF ADOBE MATERIALISM WOBBLING UNDER WIZENED PRESSURE BECAUSE OF THE VOLTINISM OF STACKS AND SPETCHES OF SOLIDARITY THAT CRIBBLE THAT TANTREL OF DEVOURED DEMIURGES OF DRAPER HIT ADEEM DOOMSTERS AGAINST PETTIFOGGERY LASTING INDELIBLE IN THE CONSCIENCE OF SINNERS AND TAX COLLECTORS UNABRIDGED IN THEIR MISERICORDS OF CORDSLAVE WORD CRIMES THAT SPAWN A THRILLER FRIGHT FOR GHOULS OF THE GASPING GHASTLY MOONLIGHT DRIVES OF CAREFULLY CULTIVATED BRIMBORIONS FOR BRILLIANTINE JASPERATED JARVEYS OF IATRALIPTIC LONGEUR PRANCING AT THROTTLEBOTTOM TOCODYAMETERS THAT CODDLE EVERY VELCRO SOOT BELABORED WITH CONSTRAINT AND CRAZED UPON SCALDING THIRSTS FOR DUSTBOWL RUNAGATES FLOATING WITH WHELVES ABOVE EVERY METROPOLITAN GASP OF COACERVATION ESPECIALLY IN ANACHORIC CONDITIONS CREATED BY REGIONAL BANKING SECRETS PEDDLED INTO BARNSTORM BY ORCHESTRA AND GALLOWS. THE RINKOMANIA OF RINGENT RAREFACTION IN THE QUIBBLES OF QUESTERMONGERS GRAPPLING THE TETHER OF ZIP LINE DECLASSIFICATION SHOWCASES THE ATOMIC NATURE OF VEEPSTAKE VEESES OF VARSAL QUANTULATIONS OF PROBABLE EXIGENCY BECAUSE TRIMSCREET NOTAPHILY THAT NEWELS TREAT WITH MUGIENT RUDENTURE MIGHT ONLY ASTOUND THE PEOPLE OF A BADIGEON MISTRUST IN THE SYSTEM OF STANDPIPES AMONG THE STANNARY BECAUSE IN THIGMOTAXIS A CHUCKWALLA CAN ACCOST MODERN PLIGHT BY DEMOCRATIC HEFT ESPECIALLY IN CLADOGENESIS AND SPODOMANCY BECAUSE NO LONGER IS THE SINECURE A FACTOTUM TO DESTINED UNBUTTONED SNOOZES OF THE CHAVISH OF MANY BIRDS ALL AT  ONCE IN CONCLAMATION AVERTING THEMSELVES FROM MODERN TANTRELS OF TANQUAM TANTONY BECAUSE OF GIROUETTISM AND TIMMYNOGGY BOTH PART AND PARTICIPLE OF THE CONSTELLATED CONSTITUTION OF A WORLD BEYOND TRICKSTER HUCKSTER NEGOTIOSITY ****** WITH NEBULIZED NECROLOGUES AND THE ATTEMPTS OF NECROTYPE IN WHERRET LONG AGO DEMYSTIFIED THAT SUCH A HIGH DEGREE OF OXTERS SUFFERING FROM THE OVERLOCK OF NACREOUS YAFFINGALE YELEKS OF YASHIKI BECAUSE THE BINTURONG FINFUGAL COMMONALITY OF ALL CHAPERONES TO RABID DESTINY BECOME A MOTATORY MODALISM OF MOFUSSIL INTEGRITY ABOVE FREEWHEELING LICENTIOUSNESS IN PROFLIGATE SHOCK VALUE AND FLAGRANT FOUL GROIN INJURIES OF DENTICLES AND CORBELS THE SINECURES OF MAINSTAYS OF LEVERAGE BEYOND THE SNATCHES OF COQUICIDE. TOO MANY EBBERMANS EXPLOIT THE EBRIOUS TENDENCIES OF MALADROIT ECCOPROTIC ECDYSIASTS OF ECCENTRIC ORBIT AROUND THE MYTHOS AND BATHOS OF THE CULMINATED VARIETIST FOLKLORE OF WILLOWISH WITWANTON PERSIFLAGE FRISKY IN BOUNDED LOLLOPS OF DENIZENS OF PRIVY FRIVVERSCRABBLE BECAUSE OF COCARDEN SELF-FULFILLED DESTINIES OF GORDON GECKO HUCKSTERSHIP ARRAIGNED BY THE OBOLARY COMPRACHIOS ABOVE EVERY ANOINTED PROXENETE OF BOYAU SUCH THAT THE OUTFOXED GALLIVANT OF LEADEN DREAMS MIGHT INCUR THE RANCOR OF SOOT IN FULIGINOUS FUMIDUCTS BLINDING BLINKERED IMAGINATIONS IN CHECKERED EXPECTANCY BECAUSE OF THE LIABILITIES OF MANUFACTURE OF POLITY BY PELITIC MEASURES OF PIEZOMETERS WHICH ABIDE BY THE AGRACERIE OF TRAGELAPH TOURBILLONS OF TOMECIDE PRIMARILY BECAUSE SAMIZDAT ONCE BURIED BEFORE CHRONOMANCY COULD ALIGN SHOWCASES THE TWINGES OF HENPECKED HINDSIGHT OF DEADSTOCK KEELHAULS OF INTEMERATED DESTINY TO BE THE APTITUDE OF DESCRIPTION SOUGHT BY DOXASTIC ONCOSTMAN OF MINERAL SUFFICIENCY ENOUGH TO BROWBEAT MIGNON ATTEMPTS TO SWAMP THE STREETS WITH LETHAL CARNAGE AND SPURTS OF SOPHOMORIC CRIMES OF THE PETTIER SORT BY THE ADOLESCENT FABLE HALLOWED BY PERSNICKETY CONSTRINGED AND CONTECKED CARFAX CARRACKS BELONGING TO PANTOGRAPHS THAT DELIMIT AN AUSTERE FUTURE BETTER THAN A BRACKISH PISCIFAUNA OF PAST MISERY MEASURED BY DEPRIVATIONS IN MOUNTENANCE BECAUSE OF IDEMPOTENT SQUALOR REITERATIVE OFTEN TO THE DIMINUTIVE PREYING MANTIS SCORIA OF TRICHOSIS SLIPSLOP UPON THE RUMCHUNDER SILK OF RUPESTRIAN COMPREHENSION IN LANGUISHED EXHAUSTION OVER AGING RHETORIC SUITING DIFFERENT ZEITGEISTS WITH DIFFERENTIAL GRADIENTS OF SERRATED SECODONT GOLIARDY AND OTHER CAMELOPARDS BRICKBAT MANSIONS AVOID PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF THE CREAM AMNESIA HEDONISM OF AN ERA DEVOID OF MORAL PERJURY BECAUSE OF UNIVERSAL PURGATORY AND THE ITCH TOWARDS URANOPLASTY HOWEVER MISGUIDED THAT ULTRAISM OF REQUEST MIGHT BE UPON THE RESCRIPTS OF LEGALISM LITIGATED BY FILIBUSTER AND RETROACTIVE IN THE ENLISTMENT OF SPECULATION TO STORGE BARMCLOTH ECONOMIES WITH A HYBRIDIZATION OF MOONCALF DEMISANG STOICHOLOGY WITH THE SYNECHIOLOGY OF BIOLOGICALLY ATTUNED ATTEMPTS AT ACHIEVING ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY TO COMPUNCTION AMONG  STELLIONS AND STANDPIPES TO THEIR SWAPES RATHER THAN THE AXLE ROSE SWARF OF JUNGLES OF SCHOENABATIC RHABDOS RUNAGATING DELIRIFACIENT FEARS AT FORFENDED PROSCRIPTION OBEYED BY ALL MORAL KERYGMA CURVED INWARD AND BELEAGUERED OUTWARD. THE ECHARD OF MAEUITIC THOUGHTS THE IMPRINT OF ALL EMOTIVISMS EVOLVED BY TACHYTELIC EVOLUTION BY THE HARPSICHORD REFINEMENT OF CALUMET BY CAMPANILE STANDARDS OF CETACEAN LEAPS IN INVOLVED MATHESIS MIGHT PROVIDE THE DOXASTIC ONTOGRAPHY OF CATADROMOUS TAMARAW BECAUSE THE FLOURIDATION OF THE THIRST MUTILATION OF A DECREPIT SEEDY BOWERY OF MALCONTENTS OF BUSHWA COMPOUNDED BY BYRES OF SUBTERNATURAL JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES THE COMPOSITE OF MANY RHIGOSES IN HYSTERICAL OUTRAGE OVER THE PRONOUNCED PROVIDENCE OF HIGH BETA CORPORATE TRAJECTORIES MIGHT CREATE AN ECLAIRCISE RATHER THAN AN ECREVISSE BECAUSE THE HISTRINKAGE OF GOURMAND CABOOSES OF INGREDIENT SALMAGUNDIS STORGED IN MOTLEY FORMATIONS AROUND THE QUIDCUNX OF ALL MASONIC LORE SWORDFISH TECHNO BELLOWS FROM THE RAFTERS OF TSUNAMI ELEGIES IN HOMILY DESIGNED TO OVERHAUL AND OVERTURN THE DILAPIDATED INSTINCTS OF INCARNATION BY DECRASSIFICATION BECOMING AN IMPLEMENT TO TRAVERSE ALL SCALE OF TIME AND SPACE FOR MESSIANIC ARENOID ECLEGME MIGHT WE FASHION A BETTER VILLAGE OF UPSTAYS OF THE DENORATUM BECAUSE OF THEIR PERSNICKETY BAILIWICK OF PROVINCIAL SHIBBOLETHS THAT HAUNT THE MINDS OF GHASTLY MEN ATTEMPTING GHOUL GANG SLAUGHTERS BECAUSE WALTER MCGINN NEVER STOOD A CHANCE AGAINST CARNIFICINE BOLIDES OF BOMAN DACOITAGE BECAUSE OF THE FERVOR AND HEIGHT OF DRAMATURGY IN DACNOMANIA BLISTERING THE RACIAL FOOTPRINT OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES CONGREGATED AROUND HAMARCHY MEGALOMANIA WE FIZZLE AND DISSOLVE THE SIMPERS OF THE DISSOLUTE INTO THE FORMIDABLE CONCOCTION OF HOGTIED JOUGS OF CANQUE MIGHT THE ELASTANES NEVER HAVE THE COURAGE TO OUTMANTLE THE FENESTRAL FENNEC THE UNDERBELLY OF SOCIETIES CRAVEN IN DISREPUTE BECAUSE OF THE  CLADOGENESIS OF CRIME FROM THE CRYPTADIA OF NOTAPHILY AND THE URGE OR CACOETHES TOWARDS NOTITIA PRIOR TO THE DAWN OF THE POWELLISATION OF WANIGANS AGAINST POTICHOMANIA FOR SOLIDARITY, TRUTH AND A RABID SENSE OF JUSTICE NEVER FOAMING AT THE MOUTH FROM THROMBOSIS. IDEMPOTENT IMPLODENT SQUALOR MANDATED BY AVIZANDUMS OF CRUEL SAMIZDAT DIVORCED FROM GEZELLIG BECAUSE ONCOSTMANS OF INDWELLS AND THE INKTHORNS OF PRIMIPARA SURREYS OF BROADCLOTH MODERATION ON THE MOFUSSIL MODALISM THAT PROVES NEOVITALISM BECAUSE ACATALEPSY STRAINS CREDULITY TO SUCH A CONTRAHENT RESPECT THAT IT CRACKLES WITH SUBORNED SUNS SETTING LONELY LOVERS FREE ON GONDOLAS FOR GONDOLIERS BECAUSE OF THE CHAMOIS OF GOLIARDY IN SUBSULTUS JOGGLES THAT BERATE JOCKOS FOR THEIR IMPUDENT REGARDS TO POGROM AND PASTRY MIGHT WE CONVENE THE BETHEL OF THE BROAD SEAS SPRAYING THE HORIZON WITH CURGLAFF BECAUSE PETEDORES ARE TOO MALCONTENT TO STOWAWAY LEVERAGE IN WELTER THE BELLWETHER STORMS OF STRIDENT TEMPESTS OF STRIDULATION ITSELF BECOMES THE STRADOMENTRICAL DIMENSION IGNORANT IN BARAGNOSIS OF GRAVIMETRICAL DISDAIN OF PINGUEFIED WORMCAST VOGUE SAGINATED BY SURETYSHIPS OF SERICULTURE THAT MADDENS THE FATTENED VEAL OF VEILLEUSES THAT BELONG TO GROMATIC REVOLUTION COUNTERCLOCKWISE TO EVERY ORANGE ORANGUTANG HARANGUE IN THE BLOCKBUSTER MERGER OF CAPITAL WITH INTELLECTUAL HEARTH SPRAWLING PALTRIPOLITAN ARROGATION IN WEATHERBOARDS OF ARROGANCE MIGHT THE BETTER DIPLOMACY BECOME A MORE REIFIED CHARADE FOR THE PROMENADE OF GULLIBLE SWANSONGS TO THE  CHAVISH OF ELEMENTARY PATAPHYSICS SUCH THAT ALL DELINEATED SUBINTELLIGENTUR TRACES ITS FORMATIVE LITURGY AND LINEAGE TO SOBRIQUETS OF SOVENANCE FOREVER EMBEDDED IN CHARACTEROLOGY. THE KYMATOLOGY OF THE SARVODAYA BELIEFS OF THE UPAS UMBRILS OF UNUFERUN DEGRINGOLADE DROOPY WITH LOURS AND LEECHES OF SANGUINOLENT HOPES FOR IMMORTALITY BUILT INTO BYSSINE INTERTESSELATIONS OF HAUTEUR GRANDEVAL IN TAGHAIRM AND MYSTIFIED BY THE PYRAMIDAL TECHNOLOGY OF SPHENOGRAMS THAT STUPE AND STOPE AROUND THE STULMS OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT OR OTHERWISE THE ATELIOSIS OF SEROTINOUS TALENTS AGAINST DIABLERISM AND HADEHARIA BECAUSE OF THE COMMON REFRAIN OF EVIL POLTROONS PARTICIPANT IN THE JEMADAR OF BANNOCK BECAUSE OF THE  WROTH OF WURLEY DISTRACTIONS BURIED IN THE VARDLES OF THE TEMPLES OF TIME AND CHIEF TABERNACLES OF PRINCES OF JERUSALEM MARAUDING AROUND THE AGATHISM PREVALENT IN FREEMASONRY THAT DEFILES THE EDIFICE OF ENNOBLED HUMANITY MIGHT EVENTUALLY WE SCOUR EVERY ACME AND PERIGEE SUCH THAT SYNCLASTIC BREVITY BECOMES A PRISM FOR THE LIBERATION OF TOLERABLE SOCIETIES ESTRANGED FROM FINIFUGAL BINTURONG CHIFFON RUMCHUNDER RHUBARBS THAT THE VENOCLYSIS OF GREAVES AND GRILLAGE APPOINTS THE JACK-O-LANTERN SPECIFICITY OF ROODS NEVER MORE PEREMPTORY IN THEIR AFFORCED CONTRITION IN PENITENT HALLS OF WINDING RESOFINCULAR DESIGNATIONS OF DEVASTATION RECOILING BY DISAGIO IN ARBITRAGE BY THE DESIGN OF THE CURTAILED GAFFES OF UNIVERSAL DOVETAILS OF ONDOMETRY BARELY EVER DEMASSIFIED FOR  PRYING INSPECTION BECAUSE OF THE CJ MACKINTOSH EFFECT WE WILL WITNESS THE CYANOTYPES OF ALL WORLD ORDERS CONVERGE UPON MIRACULOUS FORESIGHT MET HALFWAY BY THE PULLEYS OF HINDSIGHT  THAT CLAMBER IN INTRORSE DIRECTIONS TO METE OUT EVERY CALCULI AT THE EQUIDISTANT POINT BETWEEN GENIUS AND IGNOSCENY IN UNDERSTANDING NUTATION IN CRAVEN DISTURBANCE AND PAYABLE ON DEATH PEDIGREE THROUGH THE POISON IVY OF VENDIBLE GOODS RATHER THAN PROFICUOUS VENDANGE. THERE EXISTS A SWARTHY RAPSCALLION ECREVISSE LURKING IN THE SHADOWS OF HEYDAY AMONG ZEITGEISTS MARAUDING AROUND GRANDIOSE PRETEXTS FOR PRESCIENCE BECAUSE DORMANT CATAPULTS THAT ASSAY THE REGULA OF RINKOMANIA WHICH IS THE SWARF OF PIXELLATED FRINGE BENEFITS OF CARNAL OUTRAGE MIGHT THAT DEFALCATION OF EXCHEQUER FROM CHRYSELEPHANTINE GAMBITS FOR OUTRAGE PERCURRENT IN GEOSELENIC SERENITY OR OTHERWISE SUBSULTUS OF TEMBLORS OF CHAOTIC HAECCEITIES IN DUNGEONS OF DOOM BLASPHEMIES CAN NEVER EXPIATE WITH FULL SLEDGES OF PIER 39 WHARFINGERS ON WASTELOTS BECAUSE OF WALLFISH CENTRALIZING THE OMPHALOS OF GRAVID PLENIPOTENTIARY AND PLENARY ASSEMBLIES THAT CAVORT WITH NETHER QUANDARIES TO SPAR AGAINST CONGENIAL SERPENTS BRAZEN ONLY BY THE BACKBITE OF THEIR AUTHORITARIAN REGRESS. THE STENCH OF BLENCH AND BLARNEY BLANDISHING TOADIES OF SYRINX IN THEIR HOSPITABLE KALIMBAS OF DARK SPATHODEA ABIDING BY THE TURF OF WOONERF STRUGGLING FOR WHIPSTAFF RATHER THAN JACKSTAFF BY NYALAS PREROGATIVE BECAUSE THE ESTEEM OF BRIQUET LEADS TO BRISURES IN REGAL FAMILIES AGAINST DEFENESTRATION SUCH THAT THROTTLED CONSUMERISM MET WITH THE VOLTINISM OF VORTICISM MIGHT BE THE VRAISEMBLANCE OF ALL VAURIEN REVALORIZATION IN THEIR PIVOT TO THE ESOTERIC ARTS OF NAME AND DATE, BYWORD AND CREVASSE, TRAVESTY AND TRAGEDY THAT THE IMPLODENT COMMEMORATION OF FLASKS OF WHIPLASH PLUCK THE PLUCKIEST OF THORNS TO REACH THE MOST EFFLORESCENT OF ROSES SUCH THAT WE CAN SURVIVE THE TIDE OF CERACEOUS POWER OF SEMPERVIRENT BELLETRIST WIREWOVEN INTO EVERY REPUBLIC SUCH THAT LANDSLIDES OF PSEPHOLOGY BECOME THE HABITUE OF A SOBERMINDED WORLD RARELY IF EVER BLINDSIGHTED BY NIMIETY BUT ALWAYS STELLIFIED AND CONSTELLATED BY THE CELLARER MONKS OF THE HIGH ARTS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE HALLOWED HALLS OF GUARDED BARRULETS THAT TEEM WITH CARBONATED CERTITUDE IN A  CANADA DRY WORLD SUCH THAT THE BLUEPETER GAMMERSTANG TRIAD OF TRIAGE MIGHT METE OUT MULIEBRITY NEVER BEYOND THE GASCONADE OF GUFF GUIGNOLS OF RHYPAROGRAPHY THAT  TRAUMATIZES THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF BLITZKREIGS OF SCHWMEREI AND CELIBACY IN THE SECRET TROVES OF A HISTORY PUNCTUATED BY ATROCITY AND RANSACKED BY THE DERMATOLOGY OF THE PATINA BETTER THAN THE CINEASTE OF DEEPER SUBINTELLIGENTUR WHICH IS SUBERIC LIKE A VINTNER TO PRESERVE THE RESURGENT BOOTLEGGING MOONSHINE TIDE TO THE LIMITS OF ALL POSSIBLE IMAGINATION THAT THROTTLEBOTTOMS BRACKISH IN BARNSTORM THAT  THE WASES MUST BE OBEYED TO PROVINCIAL WAPENTAKE BECAUSE OF THE SYBOTIC UNSEELED ARBITRARY MEASURES OF SGRAFFITO IN WAPENSHAW TRANSCENDENTAL OVER ALL ROMANTICISM SUCH THAT THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA KEEPS THE PERDURABLE SECRETS OF REGALIA ALIVE IN THEIR PRIVATE ALCOVES OF SQUARSONS OF A DIFFERENTIATE SQUAMATION OF SEQUESTERED REALISM IN REALITY TOO BOLAR TO WITHSTAND GRAFT. ECTHLIPSIS WITH THE EBBERMANS VAUNTLAYING THEIR PROXENETE BOYAU JIVE TALKING TRAPS OF STAYIN’ALIVE HAUTEUR OF SUPERCILIOUS TACT BECOMING IRONICALLY AN EIRENICON FOR THE STOMACHERS THAT PREVENT MISCEGENATION OF SPRINGHARES AND MURENGERS FROM PROSCRIBING THE SELCOUTH SERROWS OF SERICULTURE BALLOONING INTO INTREPID RAPTORIAL THREATS GRIMACING HEADWAY UPON THE DAYLIGHT WALKERS OF THE PISMIRISM OF ECHOPRAXIA IN PSITTACIST LIGHT REFRACTION THAT BYPASSES NATIONAL DIRECTIVES TO BRACKLE WITH NEVERLAND NAIVETY SUCH THAT CREDULITY IS A CLEPSYDRA OF THE MALAXAGE OF CARNIVOROUS FREGGETS OF FENNEC PRIMARILY OF A BLUE PRIMACY OF UNSPOKEN GAFFES OF GARBLED GABBLE OF THE GABELLE OF SCRIMSHANKED DWIZZENS AGAINST DRAZELS THAT PRANCE WITH ELEGAIC BALLET FOR BALLOTEMENT FORMATIVE IN DURAMEN AND SCAFFOLDED BY THE UTOPIAN IDEAL BECOMING AN ONEIRODYNIA OF FASTUOUS FERIAL FLAPDOODLES OF FLANNEL IN RETCHINATION OF HATED QUALMS BECOMING THE LOCKSTEP BRATTICE OF BANDOLIERS VACATED AND VACANT FOR PRISMATIC REMIGATIONS FOR REMEANTS FROM THE VALLOR OF MOONLIT SKYLINES SPHACELATED SO HIGH BECAUSE OF DRAMATURGY SO SUFFICIENT IN ACCIDENCE AND ADVENT THAT THE PARLOUS RABELASIAN COURTIERS MIGHT SLINK THROUGH THE MARSHY RESIDUE OF AN OLD DYING REPUBLIC PREPARED FOR ALL EXIGENCY BURROLING ALL CORTEGES CLOSER TO BALMORALITY THAN INSANITY. FALLIBLE MISTAKES OF A BLACKGUARD ZEITGEIST OF ANIMADVERSION FROM PRAXINOSCOPES OF DUGONG SUBVERSION SLOPPY IN ARCHITECTONIC TACT BECAUSE OF ELAPID BRINKMANSHIP IN THE SWANK OF PILLORY AND THE IGNOMINY OF LEONID METEORS AND BOLIDES INFILTRATING GREAT WHITE BUFFALO BRIMSTONE AGAINST THE HEFT AND SCHLEP OF BUFF BLINKERED CHECKERING MALINGERING HUBRIS OF INSTANTANEOUS TRAPS OF ENTRAPMENT BY PULCHRITUDE THAT THE MAJESTY OF THE REPUBLIC WILL ALWAYS BROWBEAT THE REGATTA CREWS SAILING THE CAMBRIDGE SEAS OF RECOGNIZANCE AS THE SERRATED TIMEPIECES OF EUPRAXIA MIGHT LESS OFFEND AND HEAL VULNERARY WOUNDS SELF-INFLICTED BUT RARELY CONDIGN IN SYNCLASTIC ROBBERIES OF HUMAN DIGNITY FORMATIVE IN CONSCIENCE RATHER THAN DEBATABLE IN DOUGLAS DEBATES OF DISTRICT ATTORNEYS SCARED SKITTISH BY A HARVEY DENT VANDALISM OF NEBULA AND PARSEC FOR NEPHELOMETERS OF WHARFINGERS OF THE UTMOST ELITISM OF EKPHRASIS OF THE EDAPHA THAT RARELY EDULCORATES THE EFFODIENT AFFLATUS OF AFFINE ALGORS OF ARGALI SUCH THAT SILK ROAD CHIFFONS BRASHLY CONTEND IN THEIR SUNKEN RATIOCINATIONS ABOUT THE RATIO OF SUBSTANTIVE GOODS AND MERCHANDISE OF CHOICE THAT SQUALOR SWIMS IN SPATTEES OF SIFFLEURS BEYOND THE SNATCHES OF  SEGUIDILLA IN SIGLA PRIMARILY ORBITED AROUND JIMSWINGING ATROCITIES ALWAYS HALLOWED AS TRAVESTY ADULTERATED BY THE CRUEL IMBRUTED TRAGEDIES OF MARKETABLE TIME IN WANHOPE AND WANION FOR DESPERATION IN GASCONADE. THE ARCEATION OF MODERN ECONOMIES IS BUILT ON THE ECCOPROTIC ECTOBATIC ECHARD OF THE MAIEUTIC EDULCORATION OF FAMISHED WARLORDS BENIGHTED BY THE FOGHORNS OF SEMAPHORES OF THE DAYLIGHT PRISTINE MOONLIT CAVERNS OF PATHWAY AND ENTELECHY IN SOLUTIONS TO THE PATAPHYSICS OF HUMAN THERMOLYSIS IN CONTRAHENT DYNAMICS THAT STORGE THE WORLD AGAINST STULMS AND STOPING AGENTS OF STANNARY MIXED WITH THIXOTROPY MET BY INCLEMENT TACITURN CHISELERS IN THE ANCIENT PREMODERN FRAME THAT THE SPECTER OF BUGABOOS OF DEATH AND MAUDLIN BEBLUBBERED BECHIC BOLIDES CARESSING A TIMELY TOME OF A FUTURE SCRANCHING THE FILIBUSTER OF ALL FUTURE CALAMITIES SHIELDED FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE GAUNTLET OF PRIVATION SUCH THAT THE OPTIMAL DEASIL MOTATORY MOTIONS OF PLANETARY ALIGNMENT SUGGEST A NATURAL NOMOTHETIC ORDER THAT IS PREVENIENT IN ALL MAJOR AFFAIRS BECAUSE OF THE DEFT EXPERTISE OF THE UTILITARIAN SCALES OF NEGOTIOSITY WHICH ANALYZES NEUTROSOPHY AGAINST SPARTAN TRAVESTY BECAUSE OF A STOLID WORLDVIEW THAT SIMPERS THE CAULDRON OF GROWTH BEYOND THE LEGALESE OF DOUBT SUCH THAT A NEW FRONTIER OF CIVILIZATION ARISES FROM THE POTSHERDS OF VEXILLILOGY RATHER THAN ENAMORED CYMBALS OF SYMBOLISM IMPREGNATED BY THE LOVE OF THE PORBEAGLE BECOMING THE CIPPUSTURE OF WIDDERSHANCY TO ELECT THE KNIGHT OF DIVERGENCE SIMULTANEOUS TO MUTUALISM IN CONFORMITY TO RELEASE AN ECHOPRAXIA OF OMPHALISM IN MORALE THAT BOOSTERISMS ANOINT BEYOND ADVENTITIOUS ACCIDENTS OF RIGMAROLE CREATED BY OVERSLAUGHED BERLINES IN THE VERDURE OF KIPPAGE IN THE KITH OF KITTHOGE IN ATTEMPTED FEMICIDE TO REPUDIATE THE KYMATOLOGY OF THE GRAVID WORLDVIEW THAT SUSTAINS URCHINS AND BARNACLES ALIKE SUCH THAT WEGOTISM PLUMMETS FROM THE PROMONTORY OF THE IVORY FORTRESS OF PERVERSE ****** MORALITY AND IMMORALISM BECAUSE THE AURILAVE IS DESPOTIC AGAINST UMBRILS BECAUSE OF URCEOLATE UMBRACIOUS UMBRAGE BECOMING SILLOGRAPHS OF PANTAGAMY WE NEED THE GRAUNCHERS OF OUR ERA TO DEMASSIFY A TRIBUNE OF TRUTH TO PREVAIL OVER MENDACILOQUENCE AND THE SATINETS OF RADICAL JACOBIN WORMCASTS SUCH THAT SUPERSTITION CLEAVED FROM CAVALIERS AND MAVERICKS BEAM THE ROYAL ARCH MASONS FROM THEIR SLUMBER THAT MOONLIT YOGIBOGEYBOX IS THE SAUTERELLE THAT CREATES THE TURNVEREIN AND THE  GLADIATORIAL DIVERSION OPERATED BY THE HENCHMEN OF CHURCH AND STATE COMPLICIT IN HIDEBOUND WARNING KNELL AT THE TOLL OF TINTINNABULATION BECAUSE FEWER ARE VAPULATED IN A WORLD OF COLLECTIVE SOLIDARITY AROUND INDIVIDUATION RATHER THAN BACKBITES OF SLANDEROUS REGIMES OF HEGEMONY DEPARTED IN THEIR RUDENTURE OF VILLAINY SUCH THAT THE RUBEFACTION OF THE RUDDY SANGUINOLENCE SHEPHERDS RENEWAL RATHER THAN RETROMORPHOSIS. WE BELONG TO AN AGELESS EPOCH PREDICATED BY THE MATHEMATICAL RIGORS OF TAXATION WITH REPRESENTATION AND THE ENCROACHMENT OF  DERIVATIVES OF THE THIRD ROOT SOLUTION TO TURBINATION THAT TRUTINATES THE HUMAN HEART TO ANALYZE THE MEGALOGRAPHY OF MAN BEYOND HIS PETTIEST LIMITATIONS OF EGINTOCH KILMARGE AND PRURIENT PRIGGISHNESS DONE IN THE SECRECY OF THE REREDOS AGAINST THE BEST  WISHES OF TORCHIER PHAROAHS. THE URCEOLATE BERGAMASKS OF IZZARD AND ZOUK AGAINST THE ZEKS WHO SUFFERED THE  SUFFRAGE OF  STERILIZED POGROMS DESERVE THEIR  DUE COMPENSATION FOR THEIR BEREAVED SKULLDUGGERIES OF APOTHECARY SUBLIME RANCOR AIMED AT TRUCKLING TRUCULENCE TOWARDS AN AMERICA-FIRST AGENDA THAT EXAMINES RATHER THAN EXCORIATES ALL WORLD INTERTESSELATIONS BECAUSE THE BRIQUETS THAT HISTORICALLY MONOPOLIZED THE PARAPET TO ENSURE FEWER BRISURES OF CASEMATE SPODOMANCY MIGHT BE BRUISED AND BATTERED BY THE POTICHOMANIA OF AGED BUT VENERABLE BERLINE INSTITUTIONS OF GALEANTHROPY BECOMING GALERICULATED BY PALTRIPOLITAN VALUES THAT SKEW AND  SKELDER FROM EXCORIATION THE VILE AND VEHEMENCE OF THE OPPRESSED MIGHT THEY FUSION THEMSELVES EQUIPPED BY SCAPPLES AGAINST STULMS FOR THE BONANZAS OF STOCK MARKET PEDIGREE AFFORDED BY ONE FAINEANT PRESIDENTS TIME TRAVEL GAMBITS AND ANOTHER INTERREGNUM OF OBSOLAGNIUM AMONG THE MATURATION OF NEPIONIC NIDOR SCRUFF IN GUIGNOLS MEANT TO HORRIFY BY BACKPIECES STEADIED BY ICEBERG ICEBLINK UPSTAYS OF POTEMKIN VILLAGES OF MARTINGALE MIGHT THEY FIND DEFEAT IN THE LEGACY OF MAN TO BETTER HIS WISDOM WITH THE PROPER COMSTOCKERY ARRANGED BEHIND THE SCENES TO PREVENT THE PETTIFOGGERY OF TRANS-INCLUSIVE TEACHERS THAT TRY TO BRAINWASH LITTLE CHILDREN INTO SELF-STERILIZATION AND PERMANENT MARGINALIZATION BY STIGMATA AND THE VETANDA OF THEIR LONGINIQUITY CREATED BY IMPRESSIONABLE MORAL STAGES IGNORED BECAUSE OF LUDIC MARAUDERS AND VIKINGS OF ****** INFIDELITY AND THE LAIRWITES OF THE SLEAZIEST CORRUPTION ON THE BOOKS AS THE MANACLES OF THE URCHINS OF MEN THAT ESPOUSES RANCOR OVER GENTEEL GENTILITY DESPITE GENTILIAN MINORITIES PRIZING THEIR NAZES IN THEIR CAPE TOWN CAGOULES PRIMARILY BECAUSE THEY RESENT THE RANCID CREEP OF ENCROACHMENT WITHOUT THE PENALTY FOR APPROPRIATION OR VAGANTES ARROGATION THAT SUBSUMES THE BRONTEUM OF ALL MATRIOTIC DUTY ABOVE SELFISH PORNOGRAPHIC AMBITIONS BY THE WORLDS WORST FEWTERERS OF HUMAN IMAGINATION TO SUCH A DEGREE THE OUTCAST STIGMATA BECOMES AN IMMARCESIBLE FORCE FOR IMPLODENT SOCIETAL DECADENCE IN AN ERA OF DECLINE OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM TO CREATE MORE EXCEPTIONS RATHER THAN BECOME RANGIFERINE IN THE CULTIVATION OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT AND THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC AND ALL OF THE AGGIORNAMENTO THAT FIGHTS THE STULMS OF VIACOM AND OTHER WINDBAG PEDOPHILES TRYING TO REVERT OUR COUNTRY TO A SOCIETY OF EUNUCHS AND *** SLAVES TRAFFICKED AS THE NEW NORMAL IN A DERANGED WORLD THAT DESTROYS INDIVIDUATION AND BULLDOZES THE INTREPID ENTERPRISE OF A FOCUSED ECHOPRAXIA RATHER THAN A PSITTACIST NIGHTMARE OF LAZARETS OF ELASTANE PANDERING THROUGH BLOCKBUSTER CRACKJAW EPOMANIA. WE CANNOT AFFORD A SOCIETY THAT TOLERATES BOTH THE ASCENDANCY OF BILL THE BUTCHER AND THE DEMISE OF WALTER MCGINN BOTH BY SEPARATE URCHINS THAT EMBODY THE CARNAGE AND BYRE OF RAREFIED EVIL PURIFIED AND MAINLINED AGAINST SUBINTELLIGENTUR TO SUBTERNATURAL PEOPLE THAT DON’T ADHERE TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF NIDIFUGOUS IMPRESSIONABLE EUTHANASIA OF MORAL VALOR AND THE RESPECT OF ALMIGHT EUMOIREITY MIXED WITH THE PROPER ASSORTMENT OF THE PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS THAT DEFINE THE BEST WORLD REPUBLICS BECAUSE WE CAN LIONIZE THE FREAKSHOW HOUSE OF MIRRORED HORRORS AS WE FOCUS ON THE DECREPIT MODERNIZATION OF A NIVELLATED SEXUALIZATION EVEN WHEN THE SPECTERS OF FAT SHAMING AND BULLYING ARE OVERLOOKED IN FAVOR OF A MICHIGAN STATE SPARTANS MODEL FOR THE BOWDLERIZATION OF ALL CANONICAL TRADITIONS IN THE SLOW TIMBERLASK LURCH TOWARDS INEVITABLE DECADENCE IN THE NIDOR CREATED BY RAMPANT SKEWERING OF SLANTED WOBBLES IN ECCENTRIC ORBIT AROUND ECCENTRIC ****** FASCINATIONS THAT HOBBLE THE ENTIRE AMERICAN BRAND AND ENDANGER THE EUROPEAN ETHOS BECAUSE WE CAN NEITHER TOLERATE THE DEATH OF WALTER MCGINN BY THE WEGOTISTS OR THE ASCENDANCY OF BILL THE BUTCHER IN INEXORABLE BERGAMASK WHIMPERS AT THE FLACCID URCEOLATE WHEELBARROWS OF FINANCIAL REDINTEGRATION THROUGH THE DECLASSIFICATION OF GROWING EMERGENCE OF ECONOMIES OF SCALE AND SCOPE FOR A MORE HORIZONTAL APPROACH RATHER THAN A VERIDICAL VERTICAL LIMIT FORCE TO BLIND THE BLINKERED FROM THE HEIGHTS OF EVEREST IN ANACUSIC DISREGARD CREATED BY PERCURRENT DECADENCE IN THE CURRICULUM RELATING TO EARLY SEXUALIZATION. WE NEED NEVER TO BAN A BONFIRE OF BOOKS ON THE AUSTERE AND VENERABLE HISTORY OF MINORITY CULTURES NOR THEIR EPIPHENOMENA BUT A PEDERASTY LURKING IN THE WOODED BEWILDERMENT OF SUBTERNATURAL KUMBAYA RAINBOW-PAINTED SKULLDUGGERY NEEDS TO BE THWARTED BY THE CAREFUL APLOMB CALCULUS OF VIGILANT TEACHERS AND EVEN MORE VIGILANT PARENTS THAT AVOID THE AURILAVE AND REPLACE IT WITH THE UMBRIL TO PROTECT THE SANCTANIMITY OF OUR YOUTH BECAUSE THE ROT OF POISON IS A RANCOR HARDER TO WITHSTAND IN A NATION FALLING  INTO FLAGSTENCH BECAUSE OF CLEAVED CAVALIERS RATHER THAN UPSTART MAVERICKS WHO UNDERSTAND THE LOLLYGAG AS A SCAMMONY OF STEMSON RATHER THAN THE STEPNEY OF IMPORTUNATE PIONEERS TRYING TO MONOPOLIZE WITH BANGTAIL OSTENTATION TO EXCUSE THEIR QUALMS OF CONSCIENCE BY NORMALIZING ABERRANT BEHAVIOR ON A WORLDWIDE SCALE WITH LANGUAGE POLICE AND THE BERGAMASK SILENTIUM OF THOSE WHO SIDELINE THEMSELVES OUT OF EITHER APATHY OR COMPLICITY TO DEGRINGOLADE OF THE AMERICAN PRESTIGE AND THE EUROPEAN CREED OF PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC AGGIORNAMENTO AGAINST THE SEXUALIZATION OF THE YOUTH AND THE INCULCATION OF VICE AND GAMBLING AMONG  THE SUSCEPTIBLE. NOW THAT MY INVECTIVE HAS BOILED INTO EFFERVESCENT TOXINS AGAINST THE AGENDA AND CORRIGENDA OF MODERN NEPIONIC DEVELOPMENT OF LUDIC CONSCIENCE AND DESULTORY CREATIVITY DEFYING THE AURILAVE DEMASSIFICATION THAT IS CORROSIVE TO THE AMERICAN YOUTH AS WELL AS YOUTH FROM ALL OVER EUROPE IT IS IMPORTANT TO VOUCHSAFE THE RIGHTS OF THE MINORITY ON THE CONDITION THEY DON’T BARNSTORM AGAINST THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN CREATION SACROSANCT BY LURID DEGREES OF VIGILANTE PARENTS UPHOLDING TRUE CHRISTIAN VALUES OF EUMOIRIETY WITHOUT A HINT OF CHARLATAN PATAPHYSICS IN THEOLOGICAL CONTORTION BY CLOSET NIHILISM TRYING TO PANDER TO RELIGION IN ORDER TO SOW THE MUSTARD SEEDS OF DESPERATION THAT RANKLES ALL PARTIES INVOLVED BECAUSE WARHOLICS THE CLOTURE OF THE CLITTER OF THE CLINKSTONE OF RUDDY EXTINCT SHRILL IDEAS OF KNELLING BELL-TOLLING ENTER SANDMAN RECIDIVISM MUST RECEDE INTO THE WHIMPER OF A  SHEEPISH NIGHT SO THAT THE REAL KNIGHTS OF TABERNACLE AND PUBLIC SQUARE BECOME THE CENTRIPETAL MOON CERACEOUS IN ITS TIDE OF MORAL VIRTUE AND VEHEMENT VIRTUOSITY BEYOND THE BAD PARENTING OF THE PARENTS THAT STORGE THEIR KIDS ON INTOXICANTS WITHOUT CHECKING THEIR FACTS OR REALIZING THE FRAUD OF THE FRAUDSTERS THAT TRY TO INOCULATE THEMSELVES FROM BLAME BECAUSE OF THE ZEITGEIST-NORMALIZATION ARGUMENT WHICH IS SPECIOUS SOPHISTRY BECAUSE ABSOLUTE MORAL KERYGMA EXISTS TO STAND AS A STANDPIPE TO REVOLUTIONIZE  THE LOT OF THE SUBTERNATURAL PEOPLE THAT SKILLFULLY NAVIGATE SHARK-RIDDEN WATERS AGAINST WATERGATE JAWHOLES SO DEEPLY CRENELLATED WITH THE INSIGNIAS OF IMPRIMATUR IN ELITISM THAT SCOFFLAWS CHEAT THE SYSTEM RATHER THAN RECOIL IN THE BLARNEY AND BLENCH OF THEIR OWN SUPREME SHAME FOR THEIR CAGOULES AND WEGOTISTS BOTH WAGING WARS AGAINST DIFFERENT SEGMENTS FOR RADICAL RHIZOGENIC BETRAYALS OF THE GAME AS CHUCKY VS. THE GIANT TORTOISE PROCEEDS AS AN EMANATION OF THE NETHERWORLD OF WANION AND THE WOODSHEDDERS THAT DEFEND THE CREED AND CREDENDA OF VISIBILIA FOR CRETACEOUS LORE AND CERTAIN ABSOLUTION THROUGH THE ABLUTION OF THE SACRIFICE OF CULMINATED PROPHETS THROUGHOUT HISTORY MARTYRED FOR THEIR REMIGATES AGAINST ENTITLED ENTRENCHED AUTHORITIES CARING MORE OF MEGALOMANIACAL SPRITES RATHER THAN TURGID GARISH IRONIES OF THE SERENDIPITY OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS RELATIVISM. RANSACKING POLEMICS OF EXEGESIS THEORIZING ABOUT PROFLIGACY IN CONTORTIONIST STRIPPER CONFLAGRATIONS IN RAPID DEGENERATION RATHER THAN THE CONVALESCENT HOPE OF INTELLECTUAL REBIRTH ESPOUSED BY OUR FOREFATHERS IN INFINITE WISDOM DESPITE HANDSPIKES OF GOSSYPINE SUBVERSION IN THEIR NESCIENCE OF ZEITGEIST-NORMALIZATION ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE EQUALLY INVALID NOW AS THEY WERE THEN BECAUSE WE MUST UPHOLD THE APOLAUSTIC PURSUIT AND THE TWINGE OF EUMOIREITY BEYOND HYPOCRISY AND GOD BEYOND TRAVESTY. THE NOILS OF NUMBATS NEOTTIOUS IN THEIR VARDOS AND VARDLES THAT VAPULATE THAT VAUNTLAY OF REVERSE VASTATION IN RHEOTAXIS OF AIMLESS YOUTH OF A NATION PAYABLE TO THE TEACHERS THAT EXERT THE GREATEST CENTRIPETAL FORCE OF OMPHALISM MIGHT WE FIND A CULTURE OF OPTIMUMS WITHOUT LOSING AMERICAN VERVE AND EXCEPTIONALISM WHILE BOLSTERING MORALE FOR THE DISPOSSESSED AND THE BULLIED WITHOUT PIGEONHOLING ADULT-AGED ****** MINORITIES UNLESS THEY ARE GUILTY OF TRYING TO CORRUPT THE YOUTH THAT EVENTUALLY THE SARSENETS AND BOBBINETS OF STEEVE INTERMINGLE TO FORM A RENEWED MUTUALISM CAPTIVE TO THE RAPTURE OF THE EYES THAT HAVE WITNESSED THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD BECAUSE HE DECLARES ABSOLUTION AND ABLUTION AGAINST OPPRESSION WITHOUT OPPRESSING THOSE THAT OPPRESS BECAUSE OF JAUNDICE IN AN EQUAL TWILL AND TILT OF TWADDLING WOBBLES OF INTRANSIGENCE. THE REVOLUTE FRAYED EDGES OF CARNASSIAL MODERNITY TOO CRUEL TO STOMACH THAT ZEKS EXIST IN THE POGROMS OF DERELICTION BY A CONSUMER TREACLE AND TRICKLE OF CLEPSYDRA ERRATIC IN DEGRINGOLADE MIGHT WE INSTEAD MEET A RESURGENT BOOM FOR BONANZA IN SPECULATIVE ECONOMICS BY PROVIDING THE CARRACKS AND CARNETS WITH THE ACUMINATION AND DELICATE DECISIONS AROUND ACERBATION THAT YIELD MORE THAN JUST A TANTONY OF TANQUAMS FOLLOWING BLINDED SHEPHERDS OF CORRUPT PERIBLEBSIS BECAUSE OF WHIMSICAL ROTUNDAS OF ROTUND PEOPLE BRAVING THE BARMCLOTH OF THEIR BLUEPETER ALLEGIANCE IF ONLY TO THE AUDISM OF IAMATOLOGY MIGHT WE STEWARD AND CHAPERONE A BETTER REGALIA FOR THE CHIFFON AGAINST THE SHANTUNG BECAUSE TO SOCIALLY ENGINEER AND UPRIGHT PARVENU IS TO BECOME A BOOSTERISM TO THE JANGADA OF HIDDEN THICKETS OF YOUTHQUAKE WEALTH IN THE GRAVIMETRICAL PROPERTIES OF THE SILKEN SILT OF SUBSULTUS REARRANGING A RAPIDLY EVOLVING SOCIETY AGAINST INTRANSIGENCE BUT FOR THE BETTER FORMIDABLE FIGHT OF MATRIOTIC DUTY AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS BEYOND THE HATCHES OF THEOCRACY. WE FUNNEL THROUGH LAVADERO AND DELIMITED NEAT NEXILITIES AMONG PATAPHYSICS AN AGE THAT REQUIRES MORE STEM CANDIDATES THAT LIONIZE THE HIGHEST ARTS AND COLLABORATE WITH BENEVOLENT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ENLIST A CREATIVITY BOOM RATHER THAN A LAPSE INTO THE LAZINESS OF ELASTANE LAZARETS SUCH THAT POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE GLOMS OF THE GLABROUS MOON AND THE HIRSUTE WHEREWOLVES THAT BELONG TETHERED TO THE CONNUBIAL BETROTHMENT TO MERIT BUT SIMULTANEOUSLY THE GIRDLE OF ALL STUNSAIL GENERATIONS OF THE PROMACHOS FOR GROWING SIDELONG EMACITIES TACKLED WITHOUT A CACKLE AND STUNTED WITHOUT A PUBLICITY. WITH THE HELP OF SENTIENT NODALITIES OF NIDDERING NIDAMENTAL BANDOBASTS ABOUT WHICH QUISQUILOUS STERNWAYS EXIST AND COMPANIONWAYS ARE RECOURSE WE SEEK THE BELLETRIST OF A RENEWED ERA TO BECOME THE TESTUDO OF AMERICAN FORTITUDE AND FRENCH VALOR SUCH THAT THE GRANDEVAL TAGHAIRM MEETS THE MODERN DAY RECLAMATION AND CONCLAMATION OF SUPEREROGATORY AMBITIONS, VIGILANT PARENTS, TACTFUL TEACHERS, AND POSITIVE WHIPSTAFF ROLE MODELS WHO TEACH MORAL REASONING AND INSTITUTE A THEOLOGY-INCLUSIVE EDUCATION THAT SPENDS MONEY TO ENHANCE DIDACTIC TECHNIQUES AND TO BE ECTOBATIC TO REMOVE MANY A DISTRACTION FROM THE VARSAL GESTALT OF NIDOLOGY TO FOMENT A CATACLYSM AGAINST A CATASTROPHISM OF ABAXIAL DENOUEMENT SUCH THAT WE REAR THE REAR GUARD AND BLANKET THE WORLD WITH SEMINAL INSEMINATIONS IN BOTH CREATIVE ARTS AND BIOMEDICAL SOLUTIONS TO STATOLITHS THAT BROADSIDE THE GALLANTRY OF ARGALI FORTUNES WAITING TO BE DISCLOSED AND DISCOVERED IN THE HAUNTS OF PEDIGREES OF DAY AND NIGHT WITHOUT A HINT OF MALEFACTION WHILE EMPHASIZING THE KERYGMA TO SUSTAIN THE MAINLINE CARDIMELECH CARDIOGNOST SOLUTIONS OF THE PROPER PARENTING IN PERVIOUS TIMES TO CHANNEL THE CLEPSYDRA TOWARDS THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTION BY TEACHING THE MORAL KERYGMA OF CHRIST NEVER NEGLIGENT OF MUHAMMAD AMONG THE OTHER PROPHETS THAT FUELED A MANIFEST DESTINY AND A MANIFOLD JANIFORM WORLD BEYOND DUPLICITY AND SPITE SUCH THAT HANDSPIKES OF PICKELHAUBE BECOME DIMINISHED BY PORBEAGLES OF ALACRITY THAT SOAR WITH ELEGANCE NOT BECAUSE OF CONTRITION OF RIGOR BUT DESPITE THE OVERHANG OF TEMPESTS AND GULLYWASHERS THAT TREAD LIGHTLY IN ENCIRCLED WATERS BEYOND WATERGATE SHORES OF THE DISTANT PERSPECTIVE SHEPHERDED BEYOND SHEEPISHNESS. THE SQUALOR OF MANY SQUALLS OF CABOOSES VAPULATED FOR THEIR BETHEL INIQUITIES OF APIKOROS OLIM REMIGATED BY THE RELICTS THEY FORGOT IN THE AMNESIA OF THEIR HEIGHTS OF YOUTH AND THE DEPTHS OF THEIR PLANGENT INSOUCIANCE MIGHT THE ADOLESCENT FABLE SUBSIDE INTO THE SWIFT SHIFTING  SANDS OF EVOLUTIONARY TIME MORE TACHYTELIC THAN EVER BECAUSE OF SYNAPHEAS AGAINST STULMS AND THE BULGUR OF QUALMS ENLISTING THE STOPES DEMISE FROM THE PUBLIC SQUARES OF INTREPID INDEMNITY FOR THE AUTHORS OF MORALISM AND SALVATION FOUND THROUGH THE HIGHEST OF CREEDS AND THE MOST ORNATE OF COMPLEXITIES BECAUSE WE CANNOT BE BELEAGUERED BY AN ASYLUM OF SERRATED CENTURIES TRYING TO AROUSE RANCOR IN BACKBITE IN RETROSPECTION AND INSTEAD REVALORIZE AN ECONOMY NEVER AS MUCH PARALYZED BY REGELATION BUT ALWAYS THE STUNSAIL OF COAST GUARD YOUTH AUXILLIARY TO UNDERSTAND PROPINQUITY FROM DISTANCE AND GENIUS FROM INSANITY SUCH THAT THE PROPER PIVOT OF WORLD LEADERS IS AIMED TOWARDS NOT A SOPORIFIC TIRED TEDIUM BUT ALWAYS AN OPTIMISTIC BONANZA THAT KEEPS ECONOMIES AFLOAT IN THE LUXURIANCE OF THEIR OWN PEDIGREE AND VIRTUOSITY SCALED UP TO A VARSAL SCALE OF GESTALT EVOLUTION THAT UNDERSTANDS THE PLIGHT OF TAFFRAIL FENESTRAL FENNEC AND IMMARCESIBLE ASPECTS OF THE INERADICABLE ELEMENTS OF CORRUPTION FOCUSED AROUND MODALITIES OF MODALISM SUCH THAT A MUTUAL COLLECTIVISM INDIVIDUATED FOR A BRIGHT NEW CENTURY BECOMES THE SALIENT BEACON OF TRIUMPH RATHER THAN TRAGEDY AND THE GAUNT GLORY OF THE BEST OF OUR ASPIRATIONS. A STAYIN’ALIVE MODESTY EVEN WITH THE SENNET OF REGULA UPON THE TARRY OF TESTUDOS MIGHT THEY SWARM GNATS UNMATCHED BY THE PHAROAH’S MAGIC AND ALWAYS ABIDING BY THE NEPOTISM OF AGES PROLONGED BY DURESS AND DURATIVE IN THE FORMATION OF DURAMEN FOR DENEHOLES SO WELL FORTIFIED THAT THE AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM NEVER BECOMES A FAFFLE OF SIDESHOW CLOWNS AND BALATRONS WARPING SATRAPS WITH GAULEITERS OF PROTENSIVE PROTRACTORS OF CADASTER OVER INTEGRITY AND OPPORTUNISM OVER AMBITIOUS REVIVALISM. WE FIGHT AND QUIBBLE OVER THE COSTERMONGERS AMONG US AND THE TREGETOURS OF PRESTIGITATION IN CLEAVED TALKING POINTS BUT RARELY DO WE SYNERGIZE FOR THE BEST INTERESTS OF WORLD REPUBLICS TO BECOME SHINING BEACONS IN THE LIMELIGHT OF ALPENGLOW BEWILDERMENT FINDING ASCERTAINMENT RATHER THAN POLLINATION BY THE ESCAPADE ROUTE RATHER THAN MORAL KERYGMA REITERATED RATHER THAN INDOCTRINATED THAT MORE ARE PROSELYTIZED UNDER THE BANNER OF CHRIST BECAUSE OF  THE GRATUITY OF ALL SUFFERING BECOMING TANTAMOUNT TO ALL MOBILE SUFFRAGE FOR A NEOVITALIST IDEATION RATHER THAN AN ESTRANGED BLACKMAIL OF MARTINGALE EARWIGS AND IMPASSABLE THALWEGS PREVENTING THE NEGOTIOSITY OF CHURCH AND STATE TO FOUND ECCLESIOLATRY IN AGGIORNAMENTO SUCH THAT ACCOLENT FRATERNITY AND SHARED AMBITIONS CATALYZES A BROAD INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC REVOLUTION THAT IS COGNIZANT OF ITS FOOTPRINT. AMEN!

Sonnets

For this collection I have used the original definition of "sonnet" as a "little song" rather than sticking to rigid formulas. The sonnets here include traditional sonnets, tetrameter sonnets, hexameter sonnets, curtal sonnets, 15-line sonnets, and some that probably defy categorization, which I call free verse sonnets for want of a better term. Most of these sonnets employ meter, rhyme and form and tend to be Romantic in the spirit of the Romanticism of Blake, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas.




Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon's, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her, and is not the same.
I still love her and enlist this sacred fire
to keep her memory exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles;
they sleep alike―diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the "surgeons." Sleeping, all.

Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall my heart no less.
Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man's crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I'll bed there and bid the world "Good Luck."

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



In Praise of Meter
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.

If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax―their circumstance
as humble as it is?―or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?

Originally published by The Eclectic Muse and in The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003



Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed―
why should such tattered artistry be banned?

I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."

Originally published by The Chariton Review



The Forge
by Michael R. Burch

To at last be indestructible, a poem
must first glow, almost flammable, upon
a thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone,

then bend this way and that, and slowly cool
at arms-length, something irreducible
drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool

of water so contrary just a hiss
escapes it―water instantly a mist.
It writhes, a thing of senseless shapelessness ...

And then the driven hammer falls and falls.
The horses ***** their ears in nearby stalls.
A soldier on his cot leans back and smiles.

A sound of ancient import, with the ring
of honest labor, sings of fashioning.

Originally published by The Chariton Review



For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron―
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.

And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful―
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch

Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation―all but one:
we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash,
wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold.
And you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn't seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs,
and deepens on itself, as though mirth took
some comfort there and burrowed deeply in,
outlasting winter. See how very thin
her features are―that time has made more spare,
so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.

For loveliness remains in her grave eyes,
and courage in her still-delighted looks:
each face presented like a picture book's.
Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.

Originally published by Writer's Digest's: The Year's Best Writing 2003



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky,
and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our bodies to some violent ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.

Published in Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly and Poetry Life & Times. This is a sonnet I wrote for my favorite college English teacher, George King, about poetic kinship, brotherhood and romantic flights of fancy.



The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush,
for rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames' exhausted, drifting ash,
and petals falling from the rose, ...
I raise my cup before I drink,
saluting ghosts of loves long dead,
and silently propose a toast―
to joys set free, and those I fled.



Second Sight (II)
by Michael R. Burch

(Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches.)

Wiser than we know, the newborn screams,
red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means
this close to death, amid the arctic glare
of warmthless lights above.
Beware! Beware!―
encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts?

Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts―
the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist.
Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist―
this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense.
Why can he not float on, in dark suspense,
and dream of life? Why did they rip him out?

He frowns at them―small gnomish frowns, all doubt―
and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!,
re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null
ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful.



Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star―demanding our belief.
You must change your life.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This is a Rilke sonnet about a major resolution: changing the very nature of one's life. While it is only my personal interpretation of the poem above, I believe Rilke was saying to himself: "I must change my life." Why? Perhaps because he wanted to be a real artist, and when confronted with real, dynamic, living and breathing art of Rodin, he realized that he had to inject similar vitality, energy and muscularity into his poetry. Michelangelo said that he saw the angel in a block of marble, then freed it. Perhaps Rilke had to find the dynamic image of Apollo, the God of Poetry, in his materials, which were paper, ink and his imagination.―Michael R. Burch



Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you―the last one I acknowledge; return―
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage―
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return―my heart’s reserves gone―
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life―my former life―remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.



Der Panther ("The Panther")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!



Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar [1460-1525]
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet everywhere, no odor but bitter rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden―
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray―
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.

Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Southwest Review.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy's a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

Originally published by The Lyric



The City Is a Garment
by Michael R. Burch

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,―
the city is a garment stretched so thin
her festive colors bleed into the night,
and everywhere bright seams, unraveling,

cascade their brilliant contents out like coins
on motorways and esplanades; bead cars
come tumbling down long highways; at her groin
a railtrack like a zipper flashes sparks;

her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool
and from their cleavage winking lights enlarge
and travel, slender fingers ... softly pull
themselves into the semblance of a barge.

When night becomes too chill, she softly dons
great overcoats of warmest-colored dawn.

Originally published by The Lyric



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes―
I can almost remember―goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Romantics Quarterly.



The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.

There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
―feverish, wet―
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.

Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.

This is one of my early free verse sonnets but I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it. Due to the romantic style, I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time.



Abide
by Michael R. Burch

after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"

It is hard to understand or accept mortality―
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea

boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.

And so we abide . . .
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Light Quarterly.



Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.

Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes―the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel

toward some draining revelation. Air―
too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...

two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other―fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.

This is a 15-line free verse sonnet originally published by Sonnet Scroll.



Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name . . .

Once when her ******* were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist . . .

Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant . . .

Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed―
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.

Originally published by The Lyric



At Once
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.

Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.

And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet―there was more!

I awoke from long darkness,
and yet―she was there.

I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.

Originally published by The Lyric



Twice
by Michael R. Burch

Now twice she has left me
and twice I have listened
and taken her back, remembering days

when love lay upon us
and sparkled and glistened
with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze.

But twice she has left me
to start my life over,
and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn:

rekindle a fire
from ash, soot and cinder
and softly it sputters, refusing to burn.

Originally published by The Lyric



Moments
by Michael R. Burch

There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.

There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight―how the cold stars stare!―
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.



The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

I have not come for the harvest of roses―
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer―
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

Originally published by The Raintown Review



Distances
by Michael R. Burch

Moonbeams on water―
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night ...
So your memories are.

Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter ...
So near, yet so far.

NOTE: In the first stanza the "halcyon star" is the sun, which has dropped below the horizon and is thus "drowning in night." But its light strikes the moon, creating moonbeams which are reflected by the water. Sometimes memories seem that distant, that faint, that elusive. Footprints are being washed away, a heart is missing from its ribcage, and even things close at hand can seem infinitely beyond our reach.



A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world―
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace―Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.

You told us that night―your wound would not scar.

The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!

The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

for Nadia Anjuman

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw―
envenomed, fanged―could swallow, whole, your Awe.

And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty. But when the world finally robs her of both flight and song, what is left for her but to leave the world, thus bereaving the world of herself and her song?



Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.

Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
now brittle and brown
as fierce northern gales sever.

Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.

NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone.



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza and loving, compassionate mothers everywhere

There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now―
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?



In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.

I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun

and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.

This is a mostly tetrameter sonnet with shorter and longer lines.



Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul―
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.

This is a free verse sonnet with shorter and longer lines, originally published by Penny Dreadful. Mare Clausum is Latin for "Closed Sea." I wrote the first version of this poem as a teenager.



Redolence
by Michael R. Burch

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.

Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.

And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.

Published by The Eclectic Muse and The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003



Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets' wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:
to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,―
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs
seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...

... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...

... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...

... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...

"O, let down your hair!"―we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly (USA) and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch

She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.

And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...

that a little more darning may gather loose seams.

She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.

This is a free verse sonnet published by The Chariton Review as “The Knitter,” then by Penumbra, Black Bear Review and Triplopia.



If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.



A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the minions of autumn, how swiftly life goes
as I fled before love ... Now, through leaves trodden black,
shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes
of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck.

I discerned in one season all eternities of grief,
the specter of death sprawled out under the rose,
the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf,
the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows.

O, where are you now?―I was timid, absurd.
I would find comfort again in a vain word.

Published by Chrysanthemum and Tucumcari Literary Review



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”



Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.―Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart. It marveled at your power
but would not mend. And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep. Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.

This is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to a Bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly.



To Flower
by Michael R. Burch

When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.

We are not long for this earth, I know―
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



Flight 93
by Michael R. Burch

I held the switch in trembling fingers, asked
why existence felt so small, so purposeless,
like a minnow wriggling feebly in my grasp ...

vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms
as, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch
to OFF ... I heard the klaxon-shrill alarms

like vultures’ shriekings ... earthward, in a stall ...
we floated ... earthward ... wings outstretched, aghast
like Icarus ... as through the void we fell ...

till nothing was so beautiful, so blue ...
so vivid as that moment ... and I held
an image of your face, and dreamed I flew

into your arms. The earth rushed up. I knew
such comfort, in that moment, loving you.

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by The Lyric.



Oasis
by Michael R. Burch

I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.

I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,
to star these cracked lips
like an improbable dew

in the heart of a desert.

I want words to burble up
like happiness, like the thought of love,
like the overwhelming, shimmering thought of you

to a nomad who
has only known drought.

This is a mostly hexameter sonnet with shorter and longer lines.



Melting
by Michael R. Burch

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave―
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools, whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous, so bright, so beautiful ...
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.



Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

The night is full of stars. Which still exist?
Before time ends, perhaps one day we’ll know.
For now I hold your fingers to my lips
and feel their pulse ... warm, palpable and slow ...

once slow to match this reckless spark in me,
this moon in ceaseless orbit I became,
compelled by wilder gravity to flee
night’s universe of suns, for one pale flame ...

for one pale flame that seemed to signify
the Zodiac of all, the meaning of
love’s wandering flight past Neptune. Now to lie
in dawning recognition is enough ...

enough each night to bask in you, to know
the face of love ... eyes closed ... its afterglow.



All Afterglow
by Michael R. Burch

Something remarkable, perhaps ...
the color of her eyes ... though I forget
the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair
the way it blew about ... I do not know
just what it was about her that has kept
her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow
that lasted till July would be less rare,
clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind
sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’
and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow
and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond
the freezing point which keeps all things the same
... till what remains is fragile and unlike
the world above, where melted snows and rains
form rivulets that, inundate with sun,
evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream
remake the world again ... I do not know
that we can be remade―all afterglow.



These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time alone, not untouched,
and I am as they were―unsure, for the days
stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.
Ah, faithless lover―that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart that has leapt every pinnacle of Love,
and the result of all such infatuations―
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.



Come!
by Michael R. Burch

Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?

When my womb has conformed to the chastity
your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,
will you finally be pleased that my *** was thus rendered
unpalatable, disengendered?

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so
have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow
with the approval of God that I ended a maid―
thanks to a *****?

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?



Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair―
bright carrot―and her milkmaid-pallid skin,

her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children―some conceived in sin,

the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.



The Composition of Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”―W. B. Yeats

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape―
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face―
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze

that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.



The Composition of Shadows (II)
by Michael R. Burch

We breathe and so we write;
the night
hums softly its accompaniment.

Pale phosphors burn;
the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.

And what we mean
we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’

strange golden weight,
the blood’s debate
within the heart. Here, resonant,

sounds’ shadows mass
against bright glass,
within the white Labyrinthian maze.

Through simple grace,
I touch your face,
ah words! And I would gaze

the night’s dark length
in waning strength
to find the words to feel

such light again.
O, for a pen
to spell love so ethereal.



To Please The Poet
by Michael R. Burch

To please the poet, words must dance―
staccato, brisk, a two-step:
so!
Or waltz in elegance to time
of music mild,
adagio.

To please the poet, words must chance
emotion in catharsis―
flame.
Or splash into salt seas, descend
in sheets of silver-shining
rain.

To please the poet, words must prance
and gallop, gambol, revel,
rail.
Or muse upon a moment, mute,
obscure, unsure, imperfect,
pale.

To please the poet, words must sing,
or croak, wart-tongued, imagining.



The First Christmas
by Michael R. Burch

’Twas in a land so long ago . . .
the lambs lay blanketed in snow
and little children everywhere
sat and watched warm embers glow
and dreamed (of what, we do not know).

And THEN―a star appeared on high,
The brightest man had ever seen!
It made the children whisper low
in puzzled awe (what did it mean?).
It made the wooly lambkins cry.

For far away a new-born lay,
warm-blanketed in straw and hay,
a lowly manger for his crib.
The cattle mooed, distraught and low,
to see the child. They did not know

it now was Christmas day!

This is a poem in which I tried to capture the mystery and magic of the first Christmas day. If you like my poem, you are welcome to share it, but please cite me as the author, which you can do by including the title and subheading.



The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence―
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief―
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no emptier time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.



Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.

This is a free verse sonnet originally published by The HyperTexts.



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for Norman Kraeft in memory of his beloved wife June Kysilko Kraeft

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of wanting her himself, so much the lie
that she was meant for him―obscene illusion!―

made him seem a monarch throned like God on high,
when he was less than nothing; when to die
meant many stultifying, pained embraces.

She shed her gown, undid the tangled laces
that tied her to the earth: then she was his.
Now all her erstwhile beauty he defaces
and yet she grows in hallowed loveliness―
her ghost beyond perfection―for to die
was to ascend. Now he begs, penniless.



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them―trapped in brittle cellophane―
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight―an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which―tattered, frayed―
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like insects’ wings―pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never changed, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on feral claws
as It scratched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat―those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt, I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



911 Carousel
by Michael R. Burch

“And what rough beast ... slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

They laugh and do not comprehend, nor ask
which way the wind is blowing, no, nor why
the reeling azure fixture of the sky
grows pale with ash, and whispers “Holocaust.”

They think to seize the ring, life’s tinfoil prize,
and, breathless with endeavor, shriek aloud.
The voice of terror thunders from a cloud
that darkens over children adult-wise,

far less inclined to error, when a step
in any wrong direction is to fall
a JDAM short of heaven. Decoys call,
their voices plangent, honking to be shot . . .

Here, childish dreams and nightmares whirl, collide,
as East and West, on slouching beasts, they ride.



At Cædmon’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

“Cædmon’s Hymn,” composed at the Monastery of Whitby (a North Yorkshire fishing village), is one of the oldest known poems written in the English language, dating back to around 680 A.D. According to legend, Cædmon, an illiterate Anglo-Saxon cowherd, received the gift of poetic composition from an angel; he subsequently founded a school of Christian poets. Unfortunately, only nine lines of Cædmon’s verse survive, in the writings of the Venerable Bede. Whitby, tiny as it is, reappears later in the history of English literature, having been visited, in diametric contrast, by Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker’s ghoulish yet evocative Dracula.


At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and time blew all around,
I paced those dusk-enamored grounds
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked there, too, their spirits freed
―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember,
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.

Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet.
I lay this pale garland of words at his feet.

Originally published by The Lyric



Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus―hard toil―
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes―dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning―
the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame
that leashes and excites its turgid surface ...
then squanders years imagining love’s the same.

Belatedly he turns to what lies broken―
the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts,
among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking
one element that scorches and uplifts.



Downdraft
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

We feel rather than understand what he meant
as he reveals a shattered firmament
which before him never existed.

Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted
out of too many words,
but only flocks of white birds

wheeling and flying.

Here, as Time spins, reeling and dying,
the voice of a last gull
or perhaps some spirit no longer whole,

echoes its lonely madrigal
and we feel its strange pull
on the astonished soul.

O My Prodigal!

The vents of the sky, ripped asunder,
echo this wild, primal thunder—
now dying into undulations of vanishing wings . . .

and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings.



Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire

Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep
across a crevice dropping deep
into a dark and doomed domain.
Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane.
Rain falls upon your path, and pain
pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause
and heed the oft-lamented laws
which bid you not begin again
till night returns. You wail like wind,
the sighing of a soul for sin,
and give up hunting for a heart.
Till sunset falls again, depart,
though hate and hunger urge you―"On!"

Heed, hearts, your hope―the break of dawn.

Published by The HyperTexts, Dracula and His Kin and Sonnetto Poesia (Canada)



Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the ***** Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.



Because She Craved the Very Best
by Michael R. Burch

Because she craved the very best,
he took her East, he took her West;
he took her where there were no wars
and brought her bright bouquets of stars,
the blush and fragrances of roses,
the hush an evening sky imposes,
moonbeams pale and garlands rare,
and golden combs to match her hair,
a nightingale to sing all night,
white wings, to let her soul take flight ...

She stabbed him with a poisoned sting
and as he lay there dying,
she screamed, "I wanted everything!"
and started crying.



Caveat
by Michael R. Burch

If only we were not so eloquent,
we might sing, and only sing, not to impress,
but only to enjoy, to be enjoyed.

We might inundate the earth with thankfulness
for light, although it dies, and make a song
of night descending on the earth like bliss,

with other lights beyond―not to be known―
but only to be welcomed and enjoyed,
before all worlds and stars are overthrown ...

as a lover’s hands embrace a sleeping face
and find it beautiful for emptiness
of all but joy. There is no thought to love

but love itself. How senseless to redress,
in darkness, such becoming nakedness . . .

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering
by Michael R. Burch


The anachronism in your poetry
is that it lacks a future history.
The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell,
tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell
of insignificance, of eerie shoals,
of voices underwater. Lichen grows
to mute the lips of those men paid no heed,
and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed,
there is no lifeline now, for what has slipped
lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped,
have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost.
The argosy of all your toil is rust.

The anchor that you flung did not take hold
in any harbor where repair is sold.

Originally published by Ironwood



Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch

We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each face―
a carnival-like mirror. In the space
between the silver backing and the glass,
we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass
who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed
to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed
for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee
to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key.
We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung.
In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one.



Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue―
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.

The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise―
adagio, the music she now hears;
and we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars’ bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.

And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.



130 Refuted
by Michael R. Burch

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
―Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Seas that sparkle in the sun
without its light would have no beauty;
but the light within your eyes
is theirs alone; it owes no duty.
And their kindled flame, not half as bright,
is meant for me, and brings delight.

Coral formed beneath the sea,
though scarlet-tendriled, cannot warm me;
while your lips, not half so red,
just touching mine, at once inflame me.
And the searing flames your lips arouse
fathomless oceans fail to douse.

Bright roses’ brief affairs, declared
when winter comes, will wither quickly.
Your cheeks, though paler when compared
with them?―more lasting, never prickly.

And your cheeks, though wan, so dear and warm,
far vaster treasures, need no thorns.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Love Sonnet LXVI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates between ice and fire.

I love you only because you’re the one I love;
I hate you deeply, but hatred makes me implore you all the more
so that in my inconstancy
I do not see you, but love you blindly.

Perhaps January’s frigid light
will consume my heart with its cruel rays,
robbing me of the key to contentment.

In this tragic plot, I ****** myself
and I will die loveless because I love you,
because I love you, my Love, in fire and in blood.



Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.

I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your ******* like almonds, whole.

I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.

I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.



Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame;
I love you as obscure things are embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unguessed & unnamed.

I love you like shrubs that refuse to blossom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now, thanks to your love, an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body’s odors.

I love you without knowing―how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where “I” no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.



Sonnet XLV
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because―
how can I explain? A day is too long ...
and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station
where the trains all stand motionless.

Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because―
then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together,
and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home
will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.

Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf;
may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance.
Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because then you'll have gone far too far
and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth:
Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?



Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ...
and ******* limply, screams and screams.

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll



Mayflies
by Michael R. Burch

These standing stones have stood the test of time
but who are you
and what are you
and why?

As brief as mist, as transient, as pale ...
Inconsequential mayfly!

Perhaps the thought of love inspired hope?
Do midges love? Do stars bend down to see?
Do gods commend the kindnesses of ants
to aphids? Does one eel impress the sea?

Are mayflies missed by mountains? Do the stars
regret the glowworm’s stellar mimicry
the day it dies? Does not the world grind on
as if it’s no great matter, not to be?

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
And yet somehow you’re everything to me.

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official―zenlike Art―
a disembodied, white-enameled grin
of Cheshire manufacture. Part by part,
the human smile becomes mock porcelain.

Till in the end, the smile alone remains:
titanium-based alloys undestroyed
with graves’ worm-eaten contents, all the pains
of bridgework unrecalled, and what annoyed

us most about the corpses rectified
to quaintest dust. The Smile winks, deified.



Modern Appetite
by Michael R. Burch

It grumbled low, insisting it would feast
on blood and flesh, etcetera, at least
three times a day. With soft lubricious grease

and pale salacious oils, it would ease
its way through life. Each day―an aperitif.
Each night―a frothy bromide, for relief.

It lived on TV fare, wore pinafores,
slurped sugar-coated gumballs, gobbled S’mores.
When gas ensued, it burped and farted. ’Course,

it thought aloud, my wife will leave me. ******
are not so **** particular. Divorce
is certainly a settlement, toujours!

A Tums a day will keep the shrink away,
recalcify old bones, keep gas at bay.
If Simon says, etcetera, Mother, may
I have my hit of calcium today?


Mother of Cowards
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

So unlike the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Spread-eagled, showering gold, a strumpet stands:
A much-used trollop with a torch, whose flame
Has long since been extinguished. And her name?
"Mother of Cowards!" From her enervate hand
Soft ash descends. Her furtive eyes demand
Allegiance to her ****'s repulsive game.

"Keep, ancient lands, your wretched poor!" cries she
With scarlet lips. "Give me your hale, your whole,
Your huddled tycoons, yearning to be pleased!
The wretched refuse of your toilet hole?
Oh, never send one unwashed child to me!
I await Trump's pleasure by the gilded bowl!"

Originally published by Light



Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go―
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their warm laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
to be wiped clean, like slate, by the dark hand of fate
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking gently above ...

Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.

I rather vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with presumably a lot of office parties). This would have been after my sophomore year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the upper-level managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time.



Your e-Verse
by Michael R. Burch

for the posters and posers on www.fillintheblank.com

I cannot understand a word you’ve said
(and this despite an adequate I.Q.);
it must be some exotic new haiku
combined with Latin suddenly undead.

It must be hieroglyphics mixed with Greek.
Have Pound and T. S. Eliot been cloned?
Perhaps you wrote it on the ***, so ******
you spelled it backwards, just to be oblique.

I think you’re very funny, so, “Yuk! Yuk!”
I know you must be kidding; didn’t we
write crap like this and call it “poetry,”
a form of verbal exercise, P.E.,
in kindergarten, when we ran “amuck?”

Oh, sorry, I forgot to “make it new.”
Perhaps I still can learn a thing or two
from someone tres original, like you.



http://www.firesermon.com
by Michael R. Burch

your gods have become e-vegetation;
your saints―pale thumbnail icons; to enlarge
their images, right-click; it isn’t hard
to populate your web-site; not to mention
cool sound effects are nice; Sound Blaster cards
can liven up dull sermons, [zing some fire];
your drives need added Zip; you must discard
your balky paternosters: ***!!! Desire!!!
these are the watchwords, catholic; you must
as Yahoo! did, employ a little lust :)
if you want great e-commerce; hire a bard
to spruce up ancient language, shed the dust
of centuries of sameness; lameness *****;
your gods grew blurred; go 3D; scale; adjust.

Published by: Ironwood, Triplopia and Nisqually Delta Review

This poem pokes fun at various stages of religion, all tied however elliptically to T. S. Eliot's "Fire Sermon: (1) The Celts believed that the health of the land was tied to the health of its king. The Fisher King's land was in peril because he had a physical infirmity. One bad harvest and it was the king's fault for displeasing the gods. A religious icon (the Grail) could somehow rescue him. Strange logic! (2) The next stage brings us the saints, the Catholic church, etc. Millions are slaughtered, tortured and enslaved in the name of religion. Strange logic! (3) The next stage brings us to Darwin, modernism and "The Waste Land.” Religion is dead. God is dead. Man is a glorified fungus! We'll evolve into something better adapted to life on Earth, someday, if we don’t destroy it. But billions continue to believe in and worship ancient “gods.” Strange logic! (4) The current stage of religion is summed up by this e-mail: the only way religion can compete today is as a form of flashy entertainment. ***** a website before it's too late. Hire some **** supermodels and put the evangelists on the Internet!



The State of the Art (?)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has passion been coerced?

Shall poetry fade slowly,
like Latin, to past tense?
Are the bards too high and holy,
or their readers merely dense?



Plastic Art or Night Stand
by Michael R. Burch

Disclaimer: This is a poem about artificial poetry, not love dolls! The victim is the Muse.

We never questioned why “love” seemed less real
the more we touched her, and forgot her face.
Absorbed in molestation’s sticky feel,
we failed to see her staring into space,
her doll-like features frozen in a smile.
She held us in her marionette’s embrace,
her plastic flesh grown wet and slick and vile.
We groaned to feel our urgent fingers trace
her undemanding body. All the while,
she lay and gaily bore her brief disgrace.
We loved her echoed passion’s squeaky air,
her tongueless kisses’ artificial taste,
the way she matched, then raised our reckless pace,
the heart that seemed to pound, but was not there.



“Whoso List to Hunt” is a famous early English sonnet written by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) in the mid-16th century.

Whoever Longs to Hunt
by Sir Thomas Wyatt
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Whoever longs to hunt, I know the deer;
but as for me, alas!, I may no more.
This vain pursuit has left me so bone-sore
I'm one of those who falters, at the rear.
Yet friend, how can I draw my anguished mind
away from the doe?
                                   Thus, as she flees before
me, fainting I follow.
                                     I must leave off, therefore,
since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Whoever seeks her out,
                                         I relieve of any doubt,
that he, like me, must spend his time in vain.
For graven with diamonds, set in letters plain,
these words appear, her fair neck ringed about:
Touch me not, for Caesar's I am,
And wild to hold, though I seem tame.



Alien Nation
by Michael R. Burch

for J. S. S., a "Christian" poet who believes in “hell”

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices “speech”
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus’s words
over the “fortunate” sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.



Keywords/Tags: sonnet, sonnets, meter, rhythm, music, musical, rhyme, form, formal verse, formalist, tradition, traditional, romantic, romanticism, rose, fire, passion, desire, love, heart, number, numbers, mrbson

I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

O, weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend;—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!—He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode.

But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished—
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.

To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal.—Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!—
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

O, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,—
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
“Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.”
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak;
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

And others came… Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season’s bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!
“Wake thou,” cried Misery, “childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,
A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.”
And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song
Had held in holy silence, cried: “Arise!”
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
Our of the East, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

Our of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, which to her aery tread
Yielding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell:
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft Form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
“Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!” cried Urania: her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.

“‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

“O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

“The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;
The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

“The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.”

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; from her wilds Irene sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.

Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—
A Love in desolation masked;—a Power
Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another’s fate now wept his own,
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: “Who art thou?”
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so!

What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.

Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,
Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow:
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion kites that scream below;
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now—
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life—
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air
Which like a mourning veil

Rodin: My love, I am on my knees facing your beautiful body. My mouth is drinking your fire. I ***** us in stone. We are indissoluble.

Camille: I am heaven and hell. I am goddess and fire. You are my chauvinistic art-boy concubine.

Rodin: My dear Camille, can you not see my love for you is rooted in passion not stone or clay or bronze? Can you not feel my tongue lapping at your feet?

Camille: Foolish man. My feet are broken. I walk over you on stumps.

Camille leaves for England. Rodin follows.

Camille: You are boring.

Rodin: My love, can you not see that I am in a depressed mood. Can you not see that your capriciousness plagues me?

Camille: I love another.

Rodin: How can you say these things to me? I give you my heart. I give you my soul. I give you my artistic genius!

Camille: You’re right. You are a genius.

Rodin: Shall I write us up a contract?

Camille: As long as you don’t touch me.

Camille and Rodin return to Paris separately.

Rodin: It has been written. I will mentor you, write you in newspapers, place you in museums, and find you buyers.

Camille: You will not love another? You will spurn all but my art?

Rodin: I will. And you will marry me in return.

Camille: …

Rodin: Is there something wrong, my love?

Camille: Can you not see I am being facetious?

Rodin: My dear, you are my flora and gaiety. You are my chisel and stone. You are my breath and lungs.

Camille: Learn how to breathe without me.

Camille exits. Rodin crumples at the feet of Eternelle Idole.

Rodin: What have I done wrong?

Camille re-enters, her hands caked in clay.

Camille: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Rodin: Shall I get the handcuffs?

Camille: No. The lion’s cage.

*Strong tides and wet fuchsias. Camille enters the cage forever.