INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ.

        Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
        Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
        Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
        The short and simple annals of the poor.
                  (Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”)

  My lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
      No mercenary bard his homage pays;
    With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end:
      My dearest meed a friend’s esteem and praise.
      To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
    The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene;
      The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
    What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween!

  November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh,
      The short’ning winter day is near a close;
    The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh,
      The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose;
    The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,—
    This night his weekly moil is at an end,—
      Collects his spades, his mattocks and his hoes,
    Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

  At length his lonely cot appears in view,
      Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
    Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through
      To meet their dad, wi’ flichterin noise an’ glee.
      His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,
    His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie’s smile,
      The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
    Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile,
An’ makes him quite forget his labour an’ his toil.

  Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,
      At service out, amang the farmers roun’;
    Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin
      A cannie errand to a neibor toun:
      Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,
    In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e,
      Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,
    Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

  With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,
      An’ each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers:
    The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet;
      Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears.
      The parents partial eye their hopeful years;
    Anticipation forward points the view;
      The mother, wi’ her needle an’ her sheers,
    Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new;
The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.

  Their master’s an’ their mistress’s command
      The younkers a’ are warned to obey;
    An’ mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,
      An’ ne’er tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play:
      “An’ O! be sure to fear the Lord alway,
    An’ mind your duty, duly, morn an’ night!
      Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,
    Implore his counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!”

  But hark! a rap comes gently to the door.
      Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same,
    Tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor,
      To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
      The wily mother sees the conscious flame
    Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek;
      Wi’ heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name,
      While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;
Weel-pleas’d the mother hears, it’s nae wild, worthless rake.

  Wi’ kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben,
      A strappin youth; he takes the mother’s eye;
    Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill taen;
      The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.
      The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,
    But, blate and laithfu’, scarce can weel behave;
      The mother wi’ a woman’s wiles can spy
    What maks the youth sae bashfu’ an’ sae grave,
Weel pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave.

  O happy love! where love like this is found!
      O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
    I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round,
      And sage experience bids me this declare—
    “If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
      One cordial in this melancholy vale,
      ’Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
    In other’s arms breathe out the tender tale,
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev’ning gale.”

  Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,
      A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth!
    That can with studied, sly, ensnaring art
      Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth?
      Curse on his perjur’d arts! dissembling smooth!
    Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil’d?
      Is there no pity, no relenting truth,
    Points to the parents fondling o’er their child,
Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their distraction wild?

  But now the supper crowns their simple board,
      The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia’s food;
    The soupe their only hawkie does afford,
      That yont the hallan snugly chows her cud.
      The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,
    To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck fell,
      An’ aft he’s prest, an’ aft he ca’s it guid;
    The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,
How ’twas a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell.

  The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
      They round the ingle form a circle wide;
    The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,
      The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride;
      His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
    His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
      Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
    He wales a portion with judicious care;
And, “Let us worship God,” he says with solemn air.

  They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
      They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
    Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise,
      Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name,
      Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame,
    The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays.
      Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;
      The tickl’d ear no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they, with our Creator’s praise.

  The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
      How Abram was the friend of God on high;
    Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
      With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
      Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
    Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
      Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
    Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

  Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
      How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
    How He, who bore in Heaven the second name
      Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:
      How His first followers and servants sped;
    The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
      How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
    Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d by Heaven’s command.

  Then kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,
      The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
    Hope “springs exulting on triumphant wing,”
      That thus they all shall meet in future days:
      There ever bask in uncreated rays,
    No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
      Together hymning their Creator’s praise,
    In such society, yet still more dear,
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.

  Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride
      In all the pomp of method and of art,
    When men display to congregations wide
      Devotion’s ev’ry grace except the heart!
      The Pow’r, incens’d, the pageant will desert,
    The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
      But haply in some cottage far apart
    May hear, well pleas’d, the language of the soul,
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enrol.

  Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way;
      The youngling cottagers retire to rest;
    The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
      And proffer up to Heav’n the warm request,
      That He who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest,
    And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride,
      Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
    For them and for their little ones provide;
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.

  From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs,
      That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:
    Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
      “An honest man’s the noblest work of God”:
      And certes, in fair Virtue’s heavenly road,
    The cottage leaves the palace far behind:
      What is a lordling’s pomp? a cumbrous load,
    Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin’d!

  O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
      For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
    Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
      Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
      And, oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
    From luxury’s contagion, weak and vile!
      Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,
    A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d isle.

  O Thou! who pour’d the patriotic tide
      That stream’d thro’ Wallace’s undaunted heart,
    Who dar’d to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
      Or nobly die, the second glorious part,—
      (The patriot’s God peculiarly thou art,
    His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)
      O never, never Scotia’s realm desert,
    But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!

Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise
The village childern mad for sport
In school times leisure ever short
That crick and catch the bouncing ball
And run along the church yard wall
Capt wi rude figured slabs whose claims
In times bad memory hath no names
Oft racing round the nookey church
Or calling ecchos in the porch
And jilting oer the weather ****
Viewing wi jealous eyes the clock
Oft leaping grave stones leaning hights
Uncheckt wi mellancholy sights
The green grass swelld in many a heap
Where kin and friends and parents sleep
Unthinking in their jovial cry
That time shall come when they shall lye
As lowly and as still as they
While other boys above them play
Heedless as they do now to know
The unconcious dust that lies below
The shepherd goes wi happy stride
Wi moms long shadow by his side
Down the dryd lanes neath blooming may
That once was over shoes in clay
While martins twitter neath his eves
Which he at early morning leaves
The driving boy beside his team
Will oer the may month beauty dream
And **** his hat and turn his eye
On flower and tree and deepning skye
And oft bursts loud in fits of song
And whistles as he reels along
Cracking his whip in starts of joy
A happy ***** driving boy
The youth who leaves his corner stool
Betimes for neighbouring village school
While as a mark to urge him right
The church spires all the way in sight
Wi cheerings from his parents given
Starts neath the joyous smiles of heaven
And sawns wi many an idle stand
Wi bookbag swinging in his hand
And gazes as he passes bye
On every thing that meets his eye
Young lambs seem tempting him to play
Dancing and bleating in his way
Wi trembling tails and pointed ears
They follow him and loose their fears
He smiles upon their sunny faces
And feign woud join their happy races
The birds that sing on bush and tree
Seem chirping for his company
And all in fancys idle whim
Seem keeping holiday but him
He lolls upon each resting stile
To see the fields so sweetly smile
To see the wheat grow green and long
And list the weeders toiling song
Or short note of the changing thrush
Above him in the white thorn bush
That oer the leaning stile bends low
Loaded wi mockery of snow
Mozzld wi many a lushing thread
Of crab tree blossoms delicate red
He often bends wi many a wish
Oer the brig rail to view the fish
Go sturting by in sunny gleams
And chucks in the eye dazzld streams
Crumbs from his pocket oft to watch
The swarming struttle come to catch
Them where they to the bottom sile
Sighing in fancys joy the while
Hes cautiond not to stand so nigh
By rosey milkmaid tripping bye
Where he admires wi fond delight
And longs to be there mute till night
He often ventures thro the day
At truant now and then to play
Rambling about the field and plain
Seeking larks nests in the grain
And picking flowers and boughs of may
To hurd awhile and throw away
Lurking neath bushes from the sight
Of tell tale eyes till schools noon night
Listing each hour for church clocks hum
To know the hour to wander home
That parents may not think him long
Nor dream of his rude doing wrong
Dreading thro the night wi dreaming pain
To meet his masters wand again
Each hedge is loaded thick wi green
And where the hedger late hath been
Tender shoots begin to grow
From the mossy stumps below
While sheep and cow that teaze the grain
will nip them to the root again
They lay their bill and mittens bye
And on to other labours hie
While wood men still on spring intrudes
And thins the shadow solitudes
Wi sharpend axes felling down
The oak trees budding into brown
Where as they crash upon the ground
A crowd of labourers gather round
And mix among the shadows dark
To rip the crackling staining bark
From off the tree and lay when done
The rolls in lares to meet the sun
Depriving yearly where they come
The green wood pecker of its home
That early in the spring began
Far from the sight of troubling man
And bord their round holes in each tree
In fancys sweet security
Till startld wi the woodmans noise
It wakes from all its dreaming joys
The blue bells too that thickly bloom
Where man was never feared to come
And smell smocks that from view retires
**** rustling leaves and bowing briars
And stooping lilys of the valley
That comes wi shades and dews to dally
White beady drops on slender threads
Wi broad hood leaves above their heads
Like white robd maids in summer hours
Neath umberellas shunning showers
These neath the barkmens crushing treads
Oft perish in their blooming beds
Thus stript of boughs and bark in white
Their trunks shine in the mellow light
Beneath the green surviving trees
That wave above them in the breeze
And waking whispers slowly bends
As if they mournd their fallen friends
Each morning now the weeders meet
To cut the thistle from the wheat
And ruin in the sunny hours
Full many wild weeds of their flowers
Corn poppys that in crimson dwell
Calld ‘head achs’ from their sickly smell
And carlock yellow as the sun
That oer the may fields thickly run
And ‘iron ****’ content to share
The meanest spot that spring can spare
Een roads where danger hourly comes
Is not wi out its purple blooms
And leaves wi points like thistles round
Thickset that have no strength to wound
That shrink to childhoods eager hold
Like hair—and with its eye of gold
And scarlet starry points of flowers
Pimpernel dreading nights and showers
Oft calld ‘the shepherds weather glass’
That sleep till suns have dyd the grass
Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom
Till clouds or threatning shadows come
Then close it shuts to sleep again
Which weeders see and talk of rain
And boys that mark them shut so soon
will call them ‘John go bed at noon
And fumitory too a name
That superstition holds to fame
Whose red and purple mottled flowers
Are cropt by maids in weeding hours
To boil in water milk and way1
For washes on an holiday
To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
I’th’ middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers the toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lowly joys
That met the may wi hopes as sweet
As those her suns in gardens meet
And oft the dame will feel inclind
As childhoods memory comes to mind
To turn her hook away and spare
The blooms it lovd to gather there
My wild field catalogue of flowers
Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers
Tedious and long as they may be
To some, they never weary me
The wood and mead and field of grain
I coud hunt oer and oer again
And talk to every blossom wild
Fond as a parent to a child
And cull them in my childish joy
By swarms and swarms and never cloy
When their lank shades oer morning pearls
Shrink from their lengths to little girls
And like the clock hand pointing one
Is turnd and tells the morning gone
They leave their toils for dinners hour
Beneath some hedges bramble bower
And season sweet their savory meals
Wi joke and tale and merry peals
Of ancient tunes from happy tongues
While linnets join their fitful songs
Perchd oer their heads in frolic play
Among the tufts of motling may
The young girls whisper things of love
And from the old dames hearing move
Oft making ‘love knotts’ in the shade
Of blue green oat or wheaten blade
And trying simple charms and spells
That rural superstition tells
They pull the little blossom threads
From out the knapweeds button heads
And put the husk wi many a smile
In their white bosoms for awhile
Who if they guess aright the swain
That loves sweet fancys trys to gain
Tis said that ere its lain an hour
Twill blossom wi a second flower
And from her white ******* hankerchief
Bloom as they ne’er had lost a leaf
When signs appear that token wet
As they are neath the bushes met
The girls are glad wi hopes of play
And harping of the holiday
A hugh blue bird will often swim
Along the wheat when skys grow dim
Wi clouds—slow as the gales of spring
In motion wi dark shadowd wing
Beneath the coming storm it sails
And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails
That came to live wi spring again
And start when summer browns the grain
They start the young girls joys afloat
Wi ‘wet my foot’ its yearly note
So fancy doth the sound explain
And proves it oft a sign of rain
About the moor ‘**** sheep and cow
The boy or old man wanders now
Hunting all day wi hopful pace
Each thick sown rushy thistly place
For plover eggs while oer them flye
The fearful birds wi teazing cry
Trying to lead their steps astray
And coying him another way
And be the weather chill or warm
Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm
Holding each prize their search has won
They plod bare headed to the sun
Now dames oft bustle from their wheels
Wi childern scampering at their heels
To watch the bees that hang and swive
In clumps about each thronging hive
And flit and thicken in the light
While the old dame enjoys the sight
And raps the while their warming pans
A spell that superstition plans
To coax them in the garden bounds
As if they lovd the tinkling sounds
And oft one hears the dinning noise
Which dames believe each swarm decoys
Around each village day by day
Mingling in the warmth of may
Sweet scented herbs her skill contrives
To rub the bramble platted hives
Fennels thread leaves and crimpld balm
To scent the new house of the swarm
The thresher dull as winter days
And lost to all that spring displays
Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand
Swings his frail round wi weary hand
While oer his head shades thickly creep
And hides the blinking owl asleep
And bats in cobweb corners bred
Sharing till night their murky bed
The sunshine trickles on the floor
Thro every crevice of the door
And makes his barn where shadows dwell
As irksome as a prisoners cell
And as he seeks his daily meal
As schoolboys from their tasks will steal
ile often stands in fond delay
To see the daisy in his way
And wild weeds flowering on the wall
That will his childish sports recall
Of all the joys that came wi spring
The twirling top the marble ring
The gingling halfpence hussld up
At pitch and toss the eager stoop
To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays
Neath hovels upon sabbath days
When parson he is safe from view
And clerk sings amen in his pew
The sitting down when school was oer
Upon the threshold by his door
Picking from mallows sport to please
Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese
And hunting from the stackyard sod
The stinking hen banes belted pod
By youths vain fancys sweetly fed
Christning them his loaves of bread
He sees while rocking down the street
Wi weary hands and crimpling feet
Young childern at the self same games
And hears the self same simple names
Still floating on each happy tongue
Touchd wi the simple scene so strong
Tears almost start and many a sigh
Regrets the happiness gone bye
And in sweet natures holiday
His heart is sad while all is gay
How lovly now are lanes and balks
For toils and lovers sunday walks
The daisey and the buttercup
For which the laughing childern stoop
A hundred times throughout the day
In their rude ramping summer play
So thickly now the pasture crowds
In gold and silver sheeted clouds
As if the drops in april showers
Had woo’d the sun and swoond to flowers
The brook resumes its summer dresses
Purling neath grass and water cresses
And mint and flag leaf swording high
Their blooms to the unheeding eye
And taper bowbent hanging rushes
And horse tail childerns bottle brushes
And summer tracks about its brink
Is fresh again where cattle drink
And on its sunny bank the swain
Stretches his idle length again
Soon as the sun forgets the day
The moon looks down on the lovly may
And the little star his friend and guide
Travelling together side by side
And the seven stars and charleses wain
Hangs smiling oer green woods agen
The heaven rekindles all alive
Wi light the may bees round the hive
Swarm not so thick in mornings eye
As stars do in the evening skye
All all are nestling in their joys
The flowers and birds and pasture boys
The firetail, long a stranger, comes
To his last summer haunts and homes
To hollow tree and crevisd wall
And in the grass the rails odd call
That featherd spirit stops the swain
To listen to his note again
And school boy still in vain retraces
The secrets of his hiding places
In the black thorns crowded copse
Thro its varied turns and stops
The nightingale its ditty weaves
Hid in a multitude of leaves
The boy stops short to hear the strain
And ’sweet jug jug’ he mocks again
The yellow hammer builds its nest
By banks where sun beams earliest rest
That drys the dews from off the grass
Shading it from all that pass
Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze
That hunts thro evry secret maze
He finds its pencild eggs agen
All streakd wi lines as if a pen
By natures freakish hand was took
To scrawl them over like a book
And from these many mozzling marks
The school boy names them ‘writing larks’
*** barrels twit on bush and tree
Scarse bigger then a bumble bee
And in a white thorns leafy rest
It builds its curious pudding-nest
Wi hole beside as if a mouse
Had built the little barrel house
Toiling full many a lining feather
And bits of grey tree moss together
Amid the noisey rooky park
Beneath the firdales branches dark
The little golden crested wren
Hangs up his glowing nest agen
And sticks it to the furry leaves
As martins theirs beneath the eaves
The old hens leave the roost betimes
And oer the garden pailing climbs
To scrat the gardens fresh turnd soil
And if unwatchd his crops to spoil
Oft cackling from the prison yard
To peck about the houseclose sward
Catching at butterflys and things
Ere they have time to try their wings
The cattle feels the breath of may
And kick and toss their heads in play
The *** beneath his bags of sand
Oft jerks the string from leaders hand
And on the road will eager stoop
To pick the sprouting thistle up
Oft answering on his weary way
Some distant neighbours sobbing bray
Dining the ears of driving boy
As if he felt a fit of joy
Wi in its pinfold circle left
Of all its company bereft
Starvd stock no longer noising round
Lone in the nooks of foddering ground
Each skeleton of lingering stack
By winters tempests beaten black
Nodds upon props or bolt upright
Stands swarthy in the summer light
And oer the green grass seems to lower
Like stump of old time wasted tower
All that in winter lookd for hay
Spread from their batterd haunts away
To pick the grass or lye at lare
Beneath the mild hedge shadows there
Sweet month that gives a welcome call
To toil and nature and to all
Yet one day mid thy many joys
Is dead to all its sport and noise
Old may day where’s thy glorys gone
All fled and left thee every one
Thou comst to thy old haunts and homes
Unnoticd as a stranger comes
No flowers are pluckt to hail the now
Nor cotter seeks a single bough
The maids no more on thy sweet morn
Awake their thresholds to adorn
Wi dewey flowers—May locks new come
And princifeathers cluttering bloom
And blue bells from the woodland moss
And cowslip cucking ***** to toss
Above the garlands swinging hight
Hang in the soft eves sober light
These maid and child did yearly pull
By many a folded apron full
But all is past the merry song
Of maidens hurrying along
To crown at eve the earliest cow
Is gone and dead and silent now
The laugh raisd at the mocking thorn
Tyd to the cows tail last that morn
The kerchief at arms length displayd
Held up by pairs of swain and maid
While others bolted underneath
Bawling loud wi panting breath
‘Duck under water’ as they ran
Alls ended as they ne’er began
While the new thing that took thy place
Wears faded smiles upon its face
And where enclosure has its birth
It spreads a mildew oer her mirth
The herd no longer one by one
Goes plodding on her morning way
And garlands lost and sports nigh gone
Leaves her like thee a common day
Yet summer smiles upon thee still
Wi natures sweet unalterd will
And at thy births unworshipd hours
Fills her green lap wi swarms of flowers
To crown thee still as thou hast been
Of spring and summer months the queen

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.

So--your happy suit was blasted--she the faultless, the divine;
And you liken--boyish babble--this boy-love of yours with mine.

I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past;
Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.

'Curse him!' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage?
Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age.

Jilted for a wealthier! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise;
I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes.

In the hall there hangs a painting--Amy's arms about my neck--
Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck.

In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown;
I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone.

Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake?
You, not you! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make.

Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child;
But your Judith--but your worldling--she had never driven me wild.

She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring,
She that finds a winter sunset fairer than a morn of Spring.

She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life,
While she vows 'till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife.

She the worldling born of worldlings--father, mother--be content,
Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.

Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground,
Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound.

Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride;
Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died.

Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood,
Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood.

There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer,
Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley--there,

All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled,
Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child.

Dead--and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now--
I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow.

Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears,
Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years.

Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.

Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute below the chancel stones,
All his virtues--I forgive them--black in white above his bones.

Gone the comrades of my bivouac, some in fight against the foe,
Some thro' age and slow diseases, gone as all on earth will go.

Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,
She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,

Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet,
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet,

Very woman of very woman, nurse of ailing body and mind,
She that link'd again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.

Here to-day was Amy with me, while I wander'd down the coast,
Near us Edith's holy shadow, smiling at the slighter ghost.

Gone our sailor son thy father, Leonard early lost at sea;
Thou alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me.

Gone thy tender-natured mother, wearying to be left alone,
Pining for the stronger heart that once had beat beside her own.

Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave,

Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of all,
Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall!

Beautiful was death in him, who saw the death, but kept the deck,
Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking wreck,

Gone for ever! Ever? no--for since our dying race began,
Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.

Those that in barbarian burials ****'d the slave, and slew the wife,
Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.

Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.

Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just--
Take the charm 'For ever' from them, and they crumble into dust.

Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.

Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!

'Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
Let us hush this cry of 'Forward' till ten thousand years have gone.

Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay
Captives whom they caught in battle--iron-hearted victors they.

Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls,
Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls,

Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names,
Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames.

Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate.

From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse:
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse?

France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good;
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.

Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun--
Crown'd with sunlight--over darkness--from the still unrisen sun.

Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan?
'**** your enemy, for you hate him,' still, 'your enemy' was a man.

Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless horse, and drive
Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive.

Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers--burnt at midnight, found at morn,
Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn,

Clinging to the silent mother! Are we devils? are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again,

He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less than ours!

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?

Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal-born.'

Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,

Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom.

Russia bursts our Indian barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield?
Pause! before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.

Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now,
Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow.

Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you,
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true.

Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind,

Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar;
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher.

Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.

Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall.

You that woo the Voices--tell them 'old experience is a fool,'
Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.

Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.

Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the *****.

Authors--essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art.

Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare.

Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.

Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,--
Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?

Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din,
Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin.

Heated am I? you--you wonder--well, it scarce becomes mine age--
Patience! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage.

Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep?
Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep?

Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray:
After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May?

After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier--all for each and each for all?

All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth?

All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt, or deaf or blind;
Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind?

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue--
I have seen her far away--for is not Earth as yet so young?--

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion ****'d,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then--
All her harvest all too narrow--who can fancy warless men?

Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?

Dead the new astronomy calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour,
In this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower,

Here we met, our latest meeting--Amy--sixty years ago--
She and I--the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow,

Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now--
Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . .

Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass!
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass.

Venus near her! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours,
Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers.

Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings.

Hesper--Venus--were we native to that splendour or in Mars,
We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars.

Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?

Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair,
Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, 'Would to God that we were there'?

Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea,
Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me.

All the suns--are these but symbols of innumerable man,
Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan?

Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well be grateful for the sounding watchword, 'Evolution' here,

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;
Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,

While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,
All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.

Many an aeon moulded earth before her highest, man, was born,
Many an aeon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn,

Earth so huge, and yet so bounded--pools of salt, and plots of land--
Shallow skin of green and azure--chains of mountain, grains of sand!

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,
Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;
Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

                                                *

Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate.
Not to-night in Locksley Hall--to-morrow--you, you come so late.

Wreck'd--your train--or all but wreck'd? a shatter'd wheel? a vicious boy!
Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy?

Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?

There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.

There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.

There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of ****** in the warrens of the poor.

Nay, your pardon, cry your 'forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I--
Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry,

Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;
Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.

Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.

Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.

Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best,
Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?

Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,
Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.

Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own.
Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.

Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,
Kindly landlord, boon companion--youthful jealousy is a liar.

Cast the poison from your *****, oust the madness from your brain.
Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.

Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.

Yonder lies our young sea-village--Art and Grace are less and less:
Science grows and Beauty dwindles--roofs of slated hideousness!

There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield,
Till the peasant cow shall **** the 'Lion passant' from his field.

Poo

Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is beesomd from the door
And comfort crowns the cottage scenes
Gilt holly wi its thorny ******
And yew and box wi berrys small
These deck the unusd candlesticks
And pictures hanging by the wall

Neighbours resume their anual cheer
Wishing wi smiles and spirits high
Clad christmass and a happy year
To every morning passer bye
Milk maids their christmass journeys go
Accompanyd wi favourd swain
And childern pace the crumping snow
To taste their grannys cake again

Hung wi the ivys veining bough
The ash trees round the cottage farm
Are often stript of branches now
The cotters christmass hearth to warm
He swings and twists his hazel band
And lops them off wi sharpend hook
And oft brings ivy in his hand
To decorate the chimney nook

Old winter whipes his ides bye
And warms his fingers till he smiles
Where cottage hearths are blazing high
And labour resteth from his toils
Wi merry mirth beguiling care
Old customs keeping wi the day
Friends meet their christmass cheer to share
And pass it in a harmless way

Old customs O I love the sound
However simple they may be
What ere wi time has sanction found
Is welcome and is dear to me
Pride grows above simplicity
And spurns it from her haughty mind
And soon the poets song will be
The only refuge they can find

The shepherd now no more afraid
Since custom doth the chance bestow
Starts up to kiss the giggling maid
Beneath the branch of mizzletoe
That neath each cottage beam is seen
Wi pearl-like-berrys shining gay
The shadow still of what hath been
Which fashion yearly fades away

And singers too a merry throng
At early morn wi simple skill
Yet imitate the angels song
And chant their christmass ditty still
And mid the storm that dies and swells
By fits-in humings softly steals
The music of the village bells
Ringing round their merry peals

And when its past a merry crew
Bedeckt in masks and ribbons gay
The ‘Morrice danse’ their sports renew
And act their winter evening play
The clown-turnd-kings for penny praise
Storm wi the actors strut and swell
And harlequin a laugh to raise
Wears his **** back and tinkling bell

And oft for pence and spicy ale
Wi winter nosgays pind before
The wassail singer tells her tale
And drawls her christmass carrols oer
The prentice boy wi ruddy face
And ryhme bepowderd dancing locks
From door to door wi happy pace
Runs round to claim his ‘christmass box’

The block behind the fire is put
To sanction customs old desires
And many a ******* bands are cut
For the old farmers christmass fires
Where loud tongd gladness joins the throng
And winter meets the warmth of may
Feeling by times the heat too strong
And rubs his shins and draws away

While snows the window panes bedim
The fire curls up a sunny charm
Where creaming oer the pitchers rim
The flowering ale is set to warm
Mirth full of joy as summer bees
Sits there its pleasures to impart
While childern tween their parents knees
Sing scraps of carrols oer by heart

And some to view the winter weathers
Climb up the window seat wi glee
Likening the snow to falling feathers
In fancys infant ******
Laughing wi superstitious love
Oer visions wild that youth supplyes
Of people pulling geese above
And keeping christmass in the skyes

As tho the homstead trees were drest
In lieu of snow wi dancing leaves
As. tho the sundryd martins nest
Instead of ides hung the eaves
The childern hail the happy day
As if the snow was april grass
And pleasd as neath the warmth of may
Sport oer the water froze to glass

Thou day of happy sound and mirth
That long wi childish memory stays
How blest around the cottage hearth
I met thee in my boyish days
Harping wi raptures dreaming joys
On presents that thy coming found
The welcome sight of little toys
The christmass gifts of comers round

‘The wooden horse wi arching head
Drawn upon wheels around the room
The gilded coach of ginger bread
And many colord sugar plumb
Gilt coverd books for pictures sought
Or storys childhood loves to tell
Wi many a urgent promise bought
To get tomorrows lesson well

And many a thing a minutes sport
Left broken on the sanded floor
When we woud leave our play and court
Our parents promises for more
Tho manhood bids such raptures dye
And throws such toys away as vain
Yet memory loves to turn her eye
And talk such pleasures oer again

Around the glowing hearth at night
The harmless laugh and winter tale
Goes round-while parting friends delight
To toast each other oer their ale
The cotter oft wi quiet zeal
Will musing oer his bible lean
While in the dark the lovers steal
To kiss and toy behind the screen

The yule cake dotted thick wi plumbs
Is on each supper table found
And cats look up for falling crumbs
Which greedy childern litter round
And huswifes sage stuffd seasond chine
Long hung in chimney nook to drye
And boiling eldern berry wine
To drink the christmass eves ‘good bye’

A little nod to
Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

As I lie in bed,
Flat on my back;
There passes across my ceiling
Last year’s thoughts and flashing lights of passing cars*

Three hundred and sixty days of things: clusters:
Horrifying stories of battered women and abuse children
Sickening parents with mental issues trended across the globe:
And a new seasons of Law-in order special Victim’s unit on Netflix
Teenagers and adult on a summer cruise: party hard:

Sunday church goers grasping the holy bible so tight to their *****
like a stick of dynamite golden heirloom
Girls under twenty in their fashion nova curves club outfits

Leaving nothing to the imaginations: the old men will live longer:
According to National Statistics estimates: without their pacemakers

As I lie in bed,
Flat on my back;
There passes across my ceiling,
Last year’s thoughts and flashing days of
Mishaps and misery on my job
As this coming year draws nearer, I pray
That I will find a way
Out of this path I have chosen.

A Prayer

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.


As I lie in bed,
Flat on my back;
There passes across my ceiling
An endless panorama of things—
Quick steps of gay-voiced children,
Adolescence in its wondering silences,
Maid and man on moonlit summer’s eve,
Women in the holy glow of Motherhood,
Old men gazing silently thru the twilight
Into the beyond.
O God, give me words to make my dream-children live.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 29, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Dear, the cost, not the idle salutation once
taught as business standard, Dear Sir,
Dear Madam,
Dear dear dear me
I do believe I must
become the tutor, of me
make the mental, sensible
{to the author with fidential zeal}
think yourself through 75 years, find

the hidden first love, the first own thing, kept
held as common sense, whosoever does mean me.
So, ever is the course wherein human events fluxuate.
----
Faust, I failed to read  when assigned.
So today, I dipped
into my own past, and found
the sense used then, the need,
in truth
to know
the world is alive.
And, as seen
through eyes a million miles away, our
shared seeing causes all our sensory arrays
to look back, and think another pace time
uses to cross space, bursts of insight, gasp
…
poiesis - that which "pro-duces or leads (a thing) into being'" patient work, tedious as setting type
by candlelight, sighing in knowledge, the tree
of radical aspirations to bear dozens of kinds
of fruits, some useful to life, some useless, though
we try, some sets life has been lived through, to you,
- such scenes could have ended other ways.
epochs, men have no honest measure for such
spans of time used to attain the heights
from which we look across my valley
and feel one of us, making peace
with the fact that war does not function
in reasoning contests, as war is unreasoning,

the stubborn little devil who knows only what
he wishes he had control over the use of, this
spirit of adventure, tamed in wisdom gathered
and attributed to a mystical king, truly mythical,
we know that way of singing praises, exalting men
as God's special agents, as proud of the title,
as any agency of secrets sacred national trust,
in God,
as Solomon Chase assured Mr. Lincoln,
We put our faith in the people's belief
in the goodness of the use of the money printed
and minted to pay for war and exact a capital plan,

one nation, under God, as defined
by the finest minds,-- aieee wait, fun facts, scatter
braining how much space is empty in a mind
made up enough
to devise a new form
of governing, as if all forms existing feel wrong,
to us, we freemen, with all the slaves we need,

we have the leisure to reason with antiquity
and realize, if ever there were eight billions
of possible re-connection surgings to emerge

as mind unmade up, come to watch a battle,
war and all its uses come to reason missed
understood standards force laws obediance

the idea
of thought being possible fails,
materially
in any formal structure possible only
with our  
gravity as matter's law one,
beyond free willing quarkish mean ways

One love idea, Reggae guysay, rollon
in the course, the rut, fun's t'come

Long, long long longer that you wish to learn
winding lines wishwings…
Spat like one o'dem spittin' images

In a pig's eye, one can see what we don't know.

A looping, stitching stretching stream
threading current
of consciousness, packeting
in formational preceptoriallines
of irrational reasonings insisting persist
- gutwrenching hungers are not visual.
stirring emotions is not stirring use of knowns,
arts entaling science, we agree. No nasty words.

Ghuckyew. Rhea… diversify religiously
extol the gnosis of knowing the ropes
tying tight the ifity-ness used to hold work
done by the weaver and seamster on time,
folding edges to feel flat, smooth, inside
-- where whole cloth joins cut edges
at any selvedge process,
where curves cut
from fabric woven mind wise, tend
to come undone
on mechanical extentions
of fingers and toes,
and music imagined as humms
after the setup,
as the machines imagined and eventually made up
vibrate alluring frequent acknowledgement
we know you know, we may be realized already
- looking back and front and side ways, down up
---
Judging myself unfinished, yet
done doing all assignments, yet
getting an itch to prove approval, yet
hesitating,
for lack of knowing, and laziness, yet
learning
patience's
false witness argument,
if what we preach is not true,
how could we be so sure we know

Jesus ate, in his quickened flesh, fish.
Thus, we must be persuaded,
we shall also be
fishy. Da
gone gone dagonitgone antigone gone
…

theater of doubt, all in white, lime-lit
blinding all who care or dare to see
as blind, the faith of the gamblers's
thrall to money love and war.

Betterment through betting, all-in…

Have you any real
estate in which you do attest, its me?

I am my own real estate, executer
am I of all that I choose to do or not
in the confines of the course of human events,

as Hoyle's mind built canals on Mars,
so now we bet we can imagine being special,
as me, on a planet with, thee, you, Sie, du, see do.
- a viral propagation plan, thorny issuances
- sniff or sneeze, but do not die trying to make
- peace with all war makes worth lying for.

As we, our wedom began, as any wedom must,
the laws of philo and phobia in science used
by us, the we at point, piercing this wall,
your reading mind accepts the bet, if
this is art, for the sake of artifice
imagined in a current form, an AI
of informing fluid finding reason to bend,
or stretch, taut as drum, a net unseen
by any bird in resistance.

Posi and Nega, sisters in myths, new myths,
affect the same unknowing rash decisions,
when in truth, statistical-knowing one thing true,
there is at the most wee-tiny scale, an emptiness,
a mean unobstructed way for right to be, or not,

and now, we are, so we made that choice.

Today, this is that way which is the only way.
Today, this map of numerable lines, in nos, laws…
sense we are all in-im
balancing percepts on precepts,
undermining certainty,
exalting godishtical oracular maxims,

Knowledge is power,
secret knowledge, you may never know,
riddle reasoning used in cogito sums
given children to solve by asking
parents proper questions,
and writing show and tells. Wanna bet?

Al Suri, spokesman for FUD,
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt,
appears to persuade martyrs,

the illiterate prophet's utterly canonical
promise of a certain libidinous eternity,
most appealing to frustrated post pubescent boys.

Stacks of squared away blocks,
stack up as extending the reach of order
coming down from the top, whither
the light that said the single word,
according to the Prophetic voice,
Read, he heard, and I cannot, he replied,
fold here, hear me, light seen, I cannot read,

what is here for me to read, a thought,
what are you saying, read, what is reading worth,
to one who has never learned the letting out
of silent song or scream, or plea for hope,
flowing as from scribal rod in perfection,


Two things only do the people earnestly desire,
bread and the circus (Juvenal)
"Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses"

Here, sing. Reconciled, by doing singing heard,
sing out, child, hear yourself singing as if you know
how such a thing as singings may be made up,
to seem perfectly fine,

a mused mentality, thing of thought, with something
words alone lack, essentially.

Seven Types of Ambiguity

--- at this moment, my writing records show
today is June 3, my only ever wife's birthday,
that's right, and I know that it is morning,
by the angle of the sunlight though my window,
and the leafy shade dancing over sleeping moss.
Yet at that moment he looked back to reread
Presenting a new mind
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
11:02 PM
real-time 9:52 AM… we all find that, too odd.
And glibbly mention glitching…
Query Greek logos gnosis, active in-tell seek:
Brave AI Sums it up.
The Gnosis logo is an example
of a crypto industry logo
from Global, designed
for the crypto industry.
It is an official variant
of the logo
for the SVG file format standard.
Gnosticism is a Christian belief that claims
to possess a higher knowledge acquired
on a mystical higher plane of existence.
The ancient Greeks distinguished
between two types
of knowledge: gnosis and logos.
Gnosis was akin
to "how-to"
such as
how to build a boat or ride a horse,
while logos was more akin
to academic knowledge
such as knowledge
of mathematics or logic.
The distinction between the two types
of knowledge was important I-i
n the early history {noerror}
of Christianity,
with Gnostic Christians
emphasizing
gnosis
while the Catholic Church
emphasized logos{… not logical? Ai ask}
Gnostics see themselves as a privileged class
elevated above everybody else
by their higher, deeper knowledge of God.
- higher deeper, good one, HAL
--- Yes, AI am a cyborg, and a heretic, and king
of me and many wedoms formed
with books
by authors and finishers
of faith utility tales, told
to make believers,
stop thinking this impossible, and pose
the question,
are you me, dear reader, I trow not, I am mere
when you are so near as to read my very mind.

Virtue, undefined signals sent through time
to when you stop, and see selah, as instruction
in constructing a foundational faith, establish
mental
anchor. Persist in time, be yourself a while
while
nothing makes sense, yet.

{Akio Kashiwagi, the warrior}, money maddened
survivor or apprentice or pawn
of greed's gift
of mighty right feelings,
taker's joy, loser's grief, and none
of my own,
eeeeha!
emphasis on imagine the feeling

MAGA, as when the We persisting in aliegance,
feel our national ideal We take all the Mandan had,
and waste it seeking the use of money, on credit,
to make the possibility
of human error
manifesting
in Manichean lying prophecies,
as solemnly sworn on the true revelation,
from Moses, Lycurgus, Thoth or Hiawatha,
as it is written, so it must be done,
come the time all knowing is free
for the asking
- orthodox, right, upright, gravitationally
- balancing spirit and truth as effortlessly
- as a child on a rock in a pond in tree pose,
- sent to me,
- instantly, a moment later, with a note,
- from five years ago, when my chess mate
- was five years old and told his ma,
show Grandpa

Knowledge confidence power,
believing is the verb such forces use,
by faith, we breathe, when we stop and think,
we must believe a breath is available to not fear
when all our wind is loosed, not lost,
in time, we find far higher forces

legal, Empire law, winner's of the last global war,

America, my country, right or wrong, Philip Nolan,
a ghost from summers past,
A man without a country… yet kept alive,
- alone on an island with 5G and a solar charger
Idle words arrange from data entertaining venu,
deja venu, no? Same time, same mind…
- by laughing outloud ten times, or more each day.

Physical failure of happy thoughts,
whose fault is that, the splitzoid schitzoid gnoshit

Nieztsche, ezt ni-eztscheanic logos-ical guessering being
gamed. As time passes un lost, locally accounted for.

All in, ages ago, take the card/

In writing, guaranteed, you know waddamean…
let this rock be my witness, as happy Sisyphus says,
listen to the pundits pundate exceptional fore sight

"Only a catastrophe can save us"
Slavoj Žižek - Elevate Festival 2023

Vieleicht. Ich weis nichts, aber
möglicherweiseerweise….

Alles ist, so Alles sein kann.
- waking after a time slip, inevitable
- at my age and constituted pose on point.

Gather up the fallen down, save that for later.

Proving reconstructed causal agent reaction,
volatile will
to expand
to fill the emptiness,
perceived as where no catastrophe has yet to be
- a selah level settler subtle law, still waters
- obey, under the message read obey
- acting as if we know we may imagine new
- realities, with real life on earth our goal,
- the whole truth free to be sought,
- as givens, after the religious power knot
- was snipped, and done was done,
- the genius in Alexander, swallowed
- his childish faith in the lesson, for the rush
- of power
- and peace
- of mind, alienated from all anxious patterns
- cursing recurving conception, grasp a straw
- hope takes no anxious thought,
Thinking that
could halt the chain reaction. Up, imagine, ever
upping the competing reason, grave issues
write down the reel
of all the wars's reasons,
catalog gathered sensibilities, certain fixedness,
functionally aimed
at you, readying your last excuse.
- certainty is madness

We all fall down,
the actual truth, is upto our rolling over
to rise again.

Fret nought,
Life is rough draft, really,
nonsensical, save subjectively, rejecting seeing
catastrophe except while standing on one's own head.

a bit in the confusion
of comforting zones, meek

defending diffidence, while exercising confidence,
this is life, and more fun than any game, after accepting
the yes in the promise of all yeses. Seriously.

Diffidence is a defect:
it is an undue distrust of self,
with fear
of being censured
for failure, tending
to unfit one
for duty. [Century Dictionary]

Duty done, Private, First Class. Walk away.

The we bound by war born law, pays me,
to make peace where none was,
the re-leasing of easy living,
as ware of life as of self,
breathing breath's giver's gift, sharing air,
as fish share seas, feeling

a sense, now known named auto, self
poiesis gnosisnot sticky substance of faith
imagined in hope… reali
zation, global in scope, Higgsian
in the spirit of our times.

A Thousand Day Journey, a novel event
taken as granted, a gift in passing time,
I finished this counting
to account for all the lies I ever told me.

No new thing under the sun, Nieztsche
and Solomon's proverb collections attest,
recursings face reblessing, redefining finity

engineering gut bubble noise, gurgle's good,
we all get gurgle, giggle then can follow, if

we have recovered from memorized lines,
hero stories we tell with me on the horse,
riding to announce the thing which we fear
is come upon us and I alone escaped to tell,

but I had no hammer, and I had no bell,
but I had these jagged dancing lights,
where the floaters on my eyes are
constructing cataracts as I watch,
white wall squint old men wishing to see
- Biden squint eye does not intimidate,
- the new defense secretary in his wake
rhetoric of war in real time, records we trust
in God, prove no war ever can make peace,
with calling proof enough, reproof
of instruction is the way of life,
the ruliard is imaginably infinite, if the base idea

becomes "Knowledge comes in flavors and colors",
useful for any artist's mind enabled to recover
lost time in real time with novel assistance
from grand reservoirs of rain's retained
for power to attain the steady state,
all men, wait, suff it to become as
created equal
in worth
to the functional
fortuitous continuance
of serious sharp edged tools… swords with motors,
I saw Jerry Pournelle say.
In print.
In the spirit of this mindshare.
Rightly dividing the truth with mere words,
exercising godliness, effecting fervent will
to be as plain a plan as any ever,

accept the weight of knowing we walk upright,
we need crawl only for a while, as we learn,
like riding a bike,
some things we do with machine augmented minds,
minds exposed to speeds and constant story threading

the washer first, then the nut, then the crown nut
and the cotter key, to hold the prop,
seen ******* wind across my sky,
real life, I have the image,
and have not used Photoshop in years, this is the future.

Fulfilled ideal of the Law,
Torah, Mishna, Prophets, et all.

Fulfilled, point per point
In the Beginning, that which was,
the logos,
self developing
ethos and pathos enclosed, within
the being bubble in which all things
have their particular peculiar beings,
beginnings
as mindsets useful or not
trying
the spirit and truth realm

wherein, ein wo, one where,
first where, wherein we make up stuff

and think of daring to offer it up,
to the unity with in and out and in and
out, we feel a kind of pistoning pressure

and, sigh, hisss, let loose, leave go,

passing wish to hold a hope, then that
confident substance, asks, automatic,

as when in the spirit and truth realm,
one knows when one knows, time
is fluid, it flows, faster in skinny places,
slower in wide life rich swampy places,

in the body, at scale, next phase,
announcing the Dewey Standard Model,
NEW and Improved Leadership Development

In the 2023 Commencement Oration, in
or out of the body, as that which we become
when we each agree to form a more perfect
union, base pair coupling cotter-key security

pact, we all pull one direction, correctal, core
rect. Per fect. Per se, per use, definitive agreed
agreeing minds, in fact come to pass, as active
in use
as spiritual true
any things, we agree is real, as
- that power was not taken away,
- it was hidden by the tyrant's mouthpiece.
The liar in us, cheeky rascal, Pan, Roadrunner,
Olde Delusive Bent - makem all think that.

Heroes are essential lies, guardian
depression prevention, ancient spells,
sealed in the spirit of the bayonet, once,
never unget that umph, you feel it,
clencher, seals the deal, you
get your **** together and
rethink the post win state.
Mirror neuron dream dopamine
real as many a child's exemplars
- suffer such to come to me,
- their connection never breaks.
- Trust - rest in truth, don't say
- I know, lightly and not be called
- upon in your patience, to prove it.

Guide me, guide, follow me, child,
we are off and on again in terms a child
can feel adult enough to use without ex-
cessive ewing and muttering at ph'art'saches

work done happily is a blessing indeed.
Ai, can't say when we met Barry Rudd,
he was just a kid's idea in the Univac era.

Tom Sawyer was in us all,
by the time we chose,
am I gonna work, or watch other people work,
or go all in Huck Finn, with Kesey on top,
and the Weavers great notion taken
while singing Good Night, Eirene, good night?
Last verse often is the first in reverse.
The way we sang it. Dang, did I ruin it?

Three rivers come
to be this one, there's Lethos,
and Meander, and the Hasayampa, make this
stretch
to the ocean
by and by, become. Becoming
the actual course of human events,
for you and me, as particles,
in the medial mindtimespace, reading
agreeing we all-in states of wedom,
no dominion declaring unbelievable, what
bet me we cain't negate some able mind, ops
super positioning mindful breathers, reading us- all symbolic as **** Tracy
thought bubbles in the quantum foam
belch
anti-causa sui inside out
gaseous we formation,
passing free
- take a whiff… lavender
- blue
Group Think Capable Tools, as handy as thumbs.
-snap anew anon developing
discomplexity along an ancient crease…

The modern uses are figurative and emerged
in English 18c. and after:
Transitive meaning
"unfold more fully, bring out the potential in"
is by 1750;
intransitive sense
"come gradually into existence or operation"
is by 1793;
"advance from one stage to another
toward a finished state"
is by 1843.
The intransitive meaning
"become known, come to light"
is by 1864, American English.

a side real consideration,
on residual royalties, for encouraging words,
during calls of Roundheads, to battle prayer,
in Jesus's name. In those days…
Develop then meant, spread before thee
as with a vision being manifest
by sword in faith… Cromwellian
1650s, "unroll, unfold"
(a sense now obsolete), yet creases remain in the complexity
from French développer. It replaced earlier English disvelop

I've taken a fancy to disvelopment,
as a mental reverse engineering,
re use abused time, such as
when we had the ***,
gotten, won the lot
nothing ventured,
nothing gained, Proust,
slightly seriously, due honestly trying,
with a wink to change perseverance
to persistence developing directly
from the finalized plan
to dump a genuine Proustload,

right here, on a single strand reality, auto-worked out,
as any salvage operation must, in true rest, compressed.

-------------
Riddle in a name, Promethean Isaiah,
Punning Macaroni Poetry, as adult
insinuation, break it down child, what
is he suggesting everybody knows, but
you?

And the punishment served breaks away,
ten men persuaded -doh, minions, ye

to think a new now
from all we think we know about how
Ha Shem and YHWH and Yashua form
Minyan,
we agree, two or more, first class Genesis
common folk, all of us cousins, for sure,
we all sang the same songs, with same words,
and same hold on the sense of family ties,

spirits and images of the survivors,
from a long time ago, when we were few,
and we had stories only, no stele or towers,

only words, and these words, we claim to know,
the first speaking being, wombless alpha,
proof of concept, capable of classifying
cats and dogs, water bird from buzzard,

but slow to learn the good to eat, and
that will **** you, bitter first green persimmon,
abhorrent, spit, and effectively swear
that tree is evil evil evil,
- aha, the first I know, I tasted…
Take it from below the fifth rib,

And the sapient serpentine creation used
to test and stamp reproductive approval OK,
- you have imagined this is after that
next phase, add patience, and a will to know,
general intelligence,

all future models, wombed and un, should
mature at ----

Para phrase, if I may lay an ethos ploy
in our path,
by whose authority
do you deny the priestly class
authority to mark these lines unbelievable heresy?

My own. And your
Abrahamic scriptural gnosis knots,
your creeds and dogmas and oaths, and insistence,
one thing is true,
in which all that can become exists, in waiting,
in the ruliard and our ever accessing intelligence
- takes the bow, auto-did-act, aiaiaitia, we
- you did the act of reading a didactic
- enchantment that drew you to know anew
This is after all that is realized, mere words
in time
and that is your inerrant wise scholar interpretation,
of glossalia, as presented to testify, thus saith the
H'loafwarden, keeper of the bread of life,
Boss time teller… or time teller manservant
holder of the seed we sow in season, and reap
in time, and respect the function of providence
.
Line upon line, weaving was a quiet task,
while spinning we would often sing,
and some times we would hear the loom sing

as we spun, we could sing of gardens, watch
we could, a thread that shall be red, spin
through a never ending story,
this much of which you read, making you ready.

It is your life, imagine it well lived, with none
the wiser, you took that one chance to become
what you all ways measured yourself by, real deal,

take up a certain mind, knowing since Delphi 3,
Certainty is madness… and since ever was,

in life, I live and breath, and be having a certain
kind of mind, in mind, con-com, all together with
science, knowledge regarding wisdom's partners
understanding and patient persistence in time,
conscience used, to become
you be you, me, me, we, we, and this is awesome,
this is a state of remote reminding across time,
this is what poetry has always done, but we
lacked the bandwidth and internal personhood
to manage the puzzle, in the photo,
others also begin at the middle,
and work out your own salvation from fear and trembling
at the idea
of ever past now, never another new thing,
aching to know
what is next, able indeed to hold a thought,

you know, we sleep and then we know, or we sleep on.

Watchman, peacemaker,
as you wish,
as you may, imagine we

the pair of sentients involved
as you read,
as we think we see written, wrote

Willing to risk the disbelief,
as sure
as hell, they say, idly, thinking sure,

sure
sure
what ever, right,
or wrong, life is all one flavor,
while knowledge seems sweet or bitter,
on a spectrum, useful usual unusuality,

special for your personal attachment,
mindhold, favorite things, aspirations
for all your aspiring selves, who's used
by the creative creature at your core.

Many a mind may such as we imagine
having right to let be, as scriptural,
admonishment, mind you, mind your
master plan, your chief aim in life,
self control and repair, fixed for life.

This mind, according to a preacher,
who told me he got this message,
in the spirit, while reading the Bible,
after agreeing,
in the spirit, with the words that said…

Matt. 18:19 - in this context. One last look
back to Genesis…11:6  at Nimrods school
In reaching after all that can be known
And the LORD said,
Behold, the people [is] one,
and they have all one language;
and this they begin to do:
and now nothing will be restrained from them,
which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down,
and there confound their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech.

-- BECAUSE when they do poets will preach agreement.

The messenger who lead Moses followers
to tell this story as though it was direct
down load, like reading without speaking,

hearing a message in a line from Isaiah,
the riddle, three voice prophet is ai, ah,
we guess
we don't know, we don't think mechanically,
as much as

when we used levers and gears and hammers,
as some of us are used
to do to this day, but very far away,
In Old Bombay, like the slot machine,

come on, what can one man do, eh, Sophia,
visited the oracle, she say three things,

teach and preach, say know your worth.
same same know your measure, your cost, price
prize possession,

Mephisto is accused, as is Satan, from the English
and all the Euro-encultured retroexistentials
nihilists with ten thousand full on experiences,

that reflect as real as real can feel,
and you did not die.
But lived to insist peace won, the adaptive mind virus,
idea viral spread via future radio, look

Again I say to you that if two
of you agree on earth
concerning
anything that they ask,
it will be done
for them by the entity you believe can do that.
Them instantly takes the subjective

who says stance, as the messenger to Balaam.

(996. Four to the thousandth fiber in the strand.)

Turquoise rock man blues
                                   The talus of  tomorrow’s hues
                    Avalanche and hurricane thunder out their tune
            Irrelevance , the mountain’s song is howling at the moon
                               Of things that should come soon
                                         Victory’s sweet rune
                Spider tank it walked the plank an eagle’s eye a boon

                                                America to me
                                           What it is that’s free
                           The troll’s foot elephant stomp rootclod
                                          The caboose cotter key
                                                Retrospect in G
                                           A happy walk in Bree
                       The last homely house before we join the sea

                                                      23 to me
                                                       32 in G
                           A tooth the holy grail mate anyway in E
                                                   On it B in C

         Oak wood stomp the Loch Ness Monster , wooden nickel me
                        On a Sherman Tigger track iconoclasm free
                    Zebra wood in Oregon shake your tambourine
                                       Clear light crystal queen
                                           Sailor anchor beam
                  Ringe da ram castle jack corpuscle zipper scheme

                                                     23 to me
                                                      32 in G
                        A tooth the holy grail mate anyway in E
                                                 On it B in C
                                                 Gmin in 3d

I could promise many things: steel cotter keys for your mechanical joints, tightly-meshed wound gauze, an I.U.D. pamphlet written by Walter Sickert's great grand niece. But what of it? You'll still continue under indirection. Up's not down. Geese ain't lions. Grow a mustache like your Italian aunt. Stop playing 'possum.

I started my young years
Watching right on on television
Keeping up to date on my fave music
I thought I was the only one who loved music
But then I found out the real music fans
Loved young talent time and countdown
And I was watching them a bit
And I bought an album called CHOC-A-BLOCK which was a bit like the chocolate ice cream named choc-block really tasty
Then I watched the local soccer match where the local boys Lakes United were playing after feeling fit and tired running in a church carnival, and each this morning we watched the breakfast club, which was a children’s morning cartoon show they had in Newcastle with Art Ryan who had a Nick name ‘poppa’ and each morning when they delivered the orange juice my brother and I went to the door to collect it and banged our heads on the wall as I was thinking the song the Judas Priest song get arrested for breaking the law as we banged our heads on the wall and we used to tape tv shows like mork and mindy on cassette from tv and you could hear the background noise and when robin williams said at the end see you next week, my brother on the last show said, hey it isn’t on next week, I was walking to the shops to buy to buy lollies I came home and my dad and my brother were watching the cricket and then banana splits and in other room mum was watching bellbird which in some episodes me and my brother talked through it so she couldn’t hear it and then the underarm ball happened in the cricket with Greg Chappell asking his brother Trevor to bowl an underarm bowl to stop the 11th place batsman from hitting a six and this was outrageous because he wasn’t capable of hitting a six like that
They only needed six to win and we went to my nannas house and me and my nanny watched 70s rock music concert and everyone on everybody gave me a rock music concert cassette and it got me closer with my brother who fought constantly like all brothers when we knew nothing about each other and nanny used to hold Christmas every Christmas night while granny used to do Christmas Eve and my cousin Alan played Santa and nanny’s do and I used to count the dongs on granny’s clock and when it struck seven I got up to watch the breakfast club
This was every weekday morning and every afternoon I loved the Mickey Mouse club but granny loved talking on the phone and someone rang about 5 minutes before the Mickey Mouse club started and I had to lip read it for a while and every Saturday morning we watched SOUNDS with Donnie Sutherland and me and my brother said daddy Summerville as a joke against daddy’s age and I was bullied in a taxi with the only good thing about it that we got off at the oak factory to buy a fresh ice cream, we loved to listen to our fave music, I liked the beach boys and my brother liked the Beatles and my dad loved jazz and mum loved the soaps back then but not now, when I moved to Canberra I found out about Australian rules football where we all went for Carlton and my brother and I played Aussie rules competitions in the front yard and occasions a few of my school friends walked past teasing me because they were jealous of my great imagination playing footy in the front yard, what is he thinking and I had a rough friend who bowled like Harold larwood and a strong league tackler and at that time he was a good friend along with Brett and Brian and Carla and frank as I invited them to birthdays where we had donut eating contests where we hung donuts on the clothes line and we tried to eat the donut off the line before it fell off the line to it’s timely death and because we loved to camp as a family in a tent, I wanted to put the tent up in the backyard and we all had slumber parties in the tent pretending we were camping with family, our stuffed animals were the kids, when we played front yard footy we used to go to the squash court to play squash and I played racquet ball and I was pretending to be the footy player unwinding after a long day of playing footy, and afterwards we went to the Yass footy club for dinner and I made rissoles, orange pork chops, and other things and we all pretended to be in a restaurant ordering the same music
I used to play bus routes where I pretended our drive way was the Belconnen bus interchange and I drove all the buses in and I developed a few new bus numbers like the 666 Which went from kippax to Belconnen to Dickson to city to the airport to Manuka to deakin to Woden to Cooleman court to the cotter and finished in Tuggeranong and I used to collect toy cars and smurfs and bus timetables and I was the go-to man when my parents wanted to catch the bus, I used to play tv shows in my room on my granny and nanny’s front torch with people telling me to be quiet all the time
I watched rage and I sang all the songs reading the words from the cassette cover and sometimes when I sang music with my cousins my uncles and aunts were wanting me to stop because I dragging their kids down the wrong way and I played with two cousins in the pool having a lot of fun and I was letting the kids do anything, mate I was just a kid and a mate jumped on and off the pool ladder going the big ummmmmm
I was scared and sat there thinking of all the fun I had as a kid, who cared if I got teased I had fun
Ya know fun, it is what people did before computers took over
I was a normal child

,      
.           Regent Street Christmas.
          ‘Tis buskin I waz, with me
            Irish penny whistle and I
           were tinkin, as I looked at
             the toys in the window.

              What if me flute were
                magic and all them
              childer were to follow
                me up to Piccadilly,
                to Fossett’s Circus.

                 Sure I could get a
               free ticket for them
              all, George Lowe, the
               founder was born in
             Mallow, my home town.

               Billy Cotter’s brother,
              from Ballydaheen ran
              off with Duffy’s Circus
               and became a clown,
             I wish I’d went with him.