Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping—rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
        Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
        Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
    This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping—tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door:—
      Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
  fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
      Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon I heard again a tapping, somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;—
    ’Tis the wind and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he: not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
    Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no
  craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
      With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
      Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore
    Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and
  door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
    Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my *****’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
      She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath
  sent thee
Respite—respite aad nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
    Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked,
  upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
    Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
    Shall be lifted—nevermore!

It is full winter now:  the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And ***** his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Full winter:  and the ***** goodman brings
His load of ******* from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
The sappy billets on the waning fire,
And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare
His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air;

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
And soon yon blanched fields will bloom again
With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,
For with the first warm kisses of the rain
The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears,
And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs
Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
Across our path at evening, and the suns
Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

Then up and down the field the sower goes,
While close behind the laughing younker scares
With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,
And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
And on the grass the creamy blossom falls
In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals

Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons
Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,
That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.

O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,
And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.

Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,
That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine,
And to the kid its little horns, and bring
The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,
Where is that old nepenthe which of yore
Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!

There was a time when any common bird
Could make me sing in unison, a time
When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
To quick response or more melodious rhyme
By every forest idyll;—do I change?
Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

Nay, nay, thou art the same:  ’tis I who seek
To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!

Thou art the same:  ’tis I whose wretched soul
Takes discontent to be its paramour,
And gives its kingdom to the rude control
Of what should be its servitor,—for sure
Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea
Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’

To burn with one clear flame, to stand *****
In natural honour, not to bend the knee
In profitless prostrations whose effect
Is by itself condemned, what alchemy
Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.

The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb,—
Were not these better far than to return
To my old fitful restless malady,
Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?

Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god
Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed
Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
Death is too rude, too obvious a key
To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy.

And Love! that noble madness, whose august
And inextinguishable might can slay
The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must
From such sweet ruin play the runaway,
Although too constant memory never can
Forget the arched splendour of those brows Olympian

Which for a little season made my youth
So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence
That all the chiding of more prudent Truth
Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence
Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!
Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss.

My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,—
Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow
Back to the troubled waters of this shore
Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
Hence!  Hence!  I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.

More barren—ay, those arms will never lean
Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
Some other head must wear that aureole,
For I am hers who loves not any man
Whose white and stainless ***** bears the sign Gorgonian.

Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,
With net and spear and hunting equipage
Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,
But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell
Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.

Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy
Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud
Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy
And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed
In wonder at her feet, not for the sake
Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.

Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!
And, if my lips be musicless, inspire
At least my life:  was not thy glory hymned
By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon,
And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son!

And yet I cannot tread the Portico
And live without desire, fear and pain,
Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
The grave Athenian master taught to men,
Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,
To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.

Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,
Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
Is childless; in the night which she had made
For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed.

Nor much with Science do I care to climb,
Although by strange and subtle witchery
She drew the moon from heaven:  the Muse Time
Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry
To no less eager eyes; often indeed
In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read

How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war
Against a little town, and panoplied
In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,
White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede
Between the waving poplars and the sea
Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae

Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,
And on the nearer side a little brood
Of careless lions holding festival!
And stood amazed at such hardihood,
And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,
And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er

Some unfrequented height, and coming down
The autumn forests treacherously slew
What Sparta held most dear and was the crown
Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew
How God had staked an evil net for him
In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim,

Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel
With such a goodly time too out of tune
To love it much:  for like the Dial’s wheel
That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon
Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes
Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.

O for one grand unselfish simple life
To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills
Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!

Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
Where love and duty mingle!  Him at least
The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast;

But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote
The clarion watchword of each Grecian school
And follow none, the flawless sword which smote
The pagan Hydra is an effete tool
Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now
Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?

One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!
Gone is that last dear son of Italy,
Who being man died for the sake of God,
And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,
O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower,
Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour

Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or
The Arno with its tawny troubled gold
O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror
Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old
When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty
Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery

Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell
With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,
Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell
With which oblivion buries dynasties
Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,
As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.

He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,
He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair,
And now lies dead by that empyreal dome
Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene
Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!

Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine
Forget awhile their discreet emperies,
Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine
Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon,
And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!

O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower!
Let some young Florentine each eventide
Bring coronals of that enchanted flower
Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,
And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies
Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;

Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,
Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim
Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings
Of the eternal chanting Cherubim
Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away
Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay,

He is not dead, the immemorial Fates
Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.
Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!
Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain
For the vile thing he hated lurks within
Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.

Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless

For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust
Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe
For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,

What Easter Day shall make her children rise,
Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet
Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes
Shall see them ******?  O it were meet
To roll the stone from off the sepulchre
And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,

Our Italy! our mother visible!
Most blessed among nations and most sad,
For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell
That day at Aspromonte and was glad
That in an age when God was bought and sold
One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,

See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves
Bind the sweet feet of Mercy:  Poverty
Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives
Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,
And no word said:- O we are wretched men
Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen

Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword
Which slew its master righteously? the years
Have lost their ancient leader, and no word
Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:
While as a ruined mother in some spasm
Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm

Genders unlawful children, Anarchy
Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal
Licence who steals the gold of Liberty
And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real
One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp
That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp

Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed
For whose dull appetite men waste away
Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
Of things which slay their sower, these each day
Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.

What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
By **** and worm, left to the stormy play
Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
By more destructful hands:  Time’s worst decay
Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,
But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.

Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air
Seems from such marble harmonies to ring
With sweeter song than common lips can dare
To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now
The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow

For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One
Who loved the lilies of the field with all
Our dearest English flowers? the same sun
Rises for us:  the seasons natural
Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:
The unchanged hills are with us:  but that Spirit hath passed away.

And yet perchance it may be better so,
For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,
****** her brother is her bedfellow,
And the Plague chambers with her:  in obscene
And ****** paths her treacherous feet are set;
Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!

For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
Of living in the healthful air, the swift
Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
And women chaste, these are the things which lift
Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s
Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,

Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair
White as her own sweet lily and as tall,
Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,—
Ah! somehow life is bigger after all
Than any painted angel, could we see
The God that is within us!  The old Greek serenity

Which curbs the passion of that

For Max

O cruel, drunken soul, darling tigress,
Come to my heart, you lethargic beast!
I long for my trembling hands to caress
Your thick and glossy fleece.

In your petticoats filled with your scent
To bury my poor, aching head,
Inhaling your flowery fragrance;
The sweetness of love now dead.

I wish to sleep, to dream perchance
As sweetly as death’s embrace,
Without remorse, my tongue will dance
On your coppery body and face.

To bury my sobbing for hours
Nothing equals your bed’s abyss,
On your lips lies oblivion’s power
And Lethe flows in your kiss.

Like one resigned to meet his end,
I’ll face my fate delighted;
Docile martyr, innocent condemned,
Whose fervour with pain is ignited.

I shall ****, to drown my malice,  
With nepenthe and hemlock blessed;
Placing my lips upon the chalice
Of your pointed, heartless breast.

I walked into a boisterous marquee

And ordered a shot of Nepenthe

What troubles you? asked the tender with a long goatee

I’ve pawned off all my treasures to the wretched blue sea

At this, with a puzzled look his neck did crane

To learn the love a starfish has for salty water, I explain

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.”
  
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore –
Nameless here for evermore.
  
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –
This it is, and nothing more.”
  
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you” – here I opened wide the door; –
Darkness there, and nothing more.
  
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” –
Merely this, and nothing more.
  
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –
‘Tis the wind and nothing more.”
  
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door –
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
  
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door –
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
  
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –  
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “other friends have flown before –
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”
  
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never – nevermore’.”
  
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
  
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my *****’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
  
Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –
On this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –
Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil – prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  
“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting –
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
  
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!

Naive waves keep reaching for the oars:
who will explain to them, the rover is gone;
The empty vessel sways from side to side
in wheezing evening winds.

On moonlit nights of silken silences,
atop misty hills overlooking the waters
at Nepenthe's, a dreamed-up reverie.

After the dawn, the night lingers on;
In the darkened room, hiding in corners ,
and dying in the emptying space
hugged between the arms.

Yet, when snow covered everything, and
the clock ticked timeless, a throb enshrined
in the heart of the stalled heart of time,

of those many years ago, carries on.

The one I love's no Achilles
No massive strength or bravery,
No leader of the cavalry,
yet he leaves me searching, endlessly
for a  single drop of nepenthe
to cure my heart of this disease
called love.

I am no Aphrodite.
But still I hope that he can see
The good I know's inside of me.
And then maybe he and I can be
A flawed Megara and Hercules
And somehow thrive, terminally,
in love.

A block in my heart angers my hand.
I cannot write, I cannot write!
I fear i'll find no respite tonight.
All of my letters melt into sand.
They are a black hole: everything and nothing.
We are but star dust the Sun sheds off his skin.
We struggle through our lives fighting our original sin.
I cannot write, I cannot write.
I know i'll find no respite tonight.
My words are everything and nothing.

Vernarth and his companions delighted in the company of the biosphere since he was in the Eclectic Spiritual Portal, and in this dimension only he could be. Later, they communicated only through his donkeys, when they wanted to send them messages or share with him, they mounted one of these equids and they could pass into this atmosphere of ultraviolet light that separated them. More than an egregious Pythagorean calculation, he already stood out in his eon of matter-spiritual energy Vernacentricus, as a quantum station of the geodesy of the Megaron that has already begun to be built. At this precious moment the secular and demiurge satellites of him arrive, they came with the foundation of the points to refer to definitively raise the Ultramundis Vernacentricus. From the Vóreios or boreal the apocalypse of San Juan will be intertestamental with the canons of Zefian that transmigrated from the powers from the transversal valleys of the Horcondising, essentially following the sensory track of the Nothofagus Obliqua to attract the iterated populations of the forest.
The patriarchs and the orthodox mountain range appeared in the cords of the fungi called Ambrosiella ceratocystidaceae, to provide the Ambrosia Mercurial, as a nutritional addition to the main pilasters of the temple, with great influence of fungal fungi. Everything was beginning to demarcate from the eruv of the Zefian arrow that was named Tetarto Vélos, or fourth arrow that was already beginning with its culminating operation with the borer beetles, demarcating the urev of the Vóreios throughout the region and on the oaks of Patmos, that began to be located from the Meli Witran Mapu Mapuche winds, beginning with Pikún-kürüf Northwind with the first two arrows of the Taxotas, and Sur Waiwén, of the Pezhetairoi, of the quantum of transmigration of the Horcondising-Panhellenic sub-mythology. Then the Puelche drags the borer beetles with more force to lift the uprising fungi of the Mandragoron by the eastern vertical, to culminate with the Lafkén-kürüf all attached to the axis that supports them from this great bilocation. The boreal is demarcated, so that the Necromancer Ezpatkul with his Augrum and gold teeth, twisted the tendency of the beetles to move the main columns of the frontispiece, being colossal in reality with twice the diameter of the central ones. Then the conclusive and posterior ones of the rectangular quadrant of the Beit Hamikdash were bilocated, to bilocate the Bern Olive Trees from Gethsemane so that they finally joined the Meltemi, and towards the aeolian winds of Tramontane Eolionimia falling on the Tekhelet of Paul of Tarsus, dropping relevant heights of some cranes with gravitating silt on their extremities, and with garbeas that were secondarily colonized on the banks of the desert areas of the rocky Hamada. As was previously proverbial, three birds climbed reflecting the crown of the kings in Bethlehem, Arriving at the sacred native city, and beginning the choirs of Nativity and passion for the hiss in tenuity on the twelve Giant Camels, where they paid special attention to rebuild another temple with a sigh greater than a Sheba Dean. The canon of Policleto was renewed with Zefian who agreed with San Juan, for this kanon that will be the relevant line of topographic surveying. Thus the basal measurements of the golden number will begin with the acroteria concerted summer seats of prosperity next to the Metopes. Ezpatkul would bring with his magic the red blood cells of Betelgeuse along Leiak with all the Templar three-dimensional morphology, naming this singular parapsychology of Pope Urban II who proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, in France, on November 27, 1095, to delineate the paradigm in the anatomy of Gaugamela bled into Vernarth's breastplate, as the archaic and first crusade that would inspire Christian supremacy, which was already anticipated before the Christian era to come. It will be visible gestures of the trajectory of the arrows of the Zefian Torah that were deposited with their hallelujahs from the ***** of Crete. The sulfur yellow and red blood cells marked the radiosity of the Eclectic Portal that opened to give Vernarth material egress, so he would take his tools and go with his donkey's escorts for the chromatic that will be sulfur yellow and red blood cells, both dependent on the complementation with the Cinnabar, and in the raised bodies of Court V of the Helleniká Necropolis in Kímolos.

Under vileness or absence of light among darkness or apocryphal light of Evil, in contrast to the robust equanimity of light and shadow partisan of Saint John the Apostle, for the hegemonic good of his incorruptible vision. The naturalness made the world apologetic with the immune defenses of the polish textures, they invoiced proportional mathematical measures ibidem of the Hommo Novis, and of the Geometric Pythagoreanism for a body seven and a half times of Polykleitos, starting from the base to the feet as the base of the plinth or frieze until reaching near the capital that exemplifies the chin, before reaching the cornice, highlighting the figure of the capital with the front of the proportional ligament between the trunk, and the columns duly. Here the seven-headed Kanon of a David would recite the measures of the psalms, or beads in degrees with hoped-for dimensions. The kinetics was earth towed by towing carts in tetra bronze arrows, which balanced the unbalanced balance and harmony of the created whole. The symmetry of the transverse poles was muscled to make kinetic centripetal in the inertia of the bolt when hitting the faint glow of the canon rays. Making himself the sustenance in the stone and the mound, towards the Vernarth counterpose when the Himathion was tried, he appeared disguised and in composing. After this initial task, they approached the fire and scalding water to **** herbs, which pretended to be the formula of the backhoe extracted from the palimpsest of the generals of Alexander the Great, when they distributed their illegitimate Ark with royal titles; they were Perdiccas, Antipater, Crátero, Eumenes de Cardia, and others like the satraps who came to be enunciated as kings; Antigonus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. Residing only the most substantial military colleague of them in this parapsychological saga Vernarth; and his brother Etréstles de Kalavrita who seconded and predestined him in his monolithic, and in the constituent sovereignty of Polis, for the purpose of reigning and raising his Kopis and Xifos intertwined in aldehyde manumissions and in the alcoholic carbonyl residues emanated from the Backhoe ferment and Nepenthe, depositing LSD in substantial amounts to align itself with Seleucus, and materially present itself in the sphere of Patmos as two representatives of both empires, one ancient Christian and the other Panhellenic, placing Seleucus in that totalitarianism over that of Alexander the Great, now extinct. On the last day after working and being satisfied with the construction work of the frontispiece, and its major columns, Vernarth joins them after temporarily leaving the eclectic portal, they sit by the fire to review the plans of the subsequent construction process del Megaron, along with his seven donkeys, mentioning Borker's necromancy. Since the omens of Wontehlimar, the linemen before Borker became reigning, for the static balustrade that will surround the Megaron, where all the Ibics rings were enlisted chorally by the patronage of the Hellenic Orthodox legacy of Alexander the Great after he was rescued by Wonthelimar from Babylon, and finally take you to your physical and spiritual shelter. The eruv of the Nótos was demarcated, surpassing the limits of the rings of stefánes Íbix, or Hoops of ibix, like nano kvantikoí daktýlioi, Nano-Quantum Ring auguring sensitize the dermis and its carpal phalanges. From the intertestamental, such as in Vóreios, passages from the Old Testament are explored here that says…: “The temple that was the only legitimate sanctuary of the Israelite people contained within it the Ark of the Covenant, a golden altar, and candlesticks of the same metal. , a table with sacred loaves and other utensils used to carry out the worship of the god Yahveh. It was located on the esplanade of Mount Moriá, in the city of Jerusalem, possibly where the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque are located. From this dome the larnax of the Great Macedonian, a prioris, the schismatics of ancient Christianity, and orthodox Judaic will be derived, separating from each other, after the fall of the second temple. Of this class and previously this was detonated due to the undivided troops of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, who destroyed it in 586 BC, also taking captives a large part of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, to Mesopotamia, giving rise to the exile and captivity of the Hebrews in Babylon. A reflective Borker of this premonition, he takes the Ibics Rings and selects one of them to join them with the first Zefian Arrow, as nano Kvantikoí Daktýlioi, quantum Nano-ring, to ensue in future similar events, avoiding invasions that cause looting and destruction. of the temple to be built on Patmos.

Nano-scales for Borker's nanotechnological conception, and estimates of threats of invasions and climatic changes, in one billion (109) and one billionth (10-9). In a meter there are one billion nanometers or, in other words, a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. For those who will have to configure the dimensions of the Mandragoron "Temple of Vernarth" with carbon atoms, the support will be made in chemical units for the re-conception of nature, and its two- or three-dimensional networks. The nanotubes with 60 carbons, distributed in 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, according to the geometric patterns of the cellular scale, in the conformation of the Hexagonal Primogeniture, being in this way concealed by the Ibics Rings, for each linear meter and cubic, traced by a nanometer which is one-billionth of a meter. Here, the borer beetles will catch the fungi ambrosiella ceratocystidaceae and will displace the virals that move geometrically from the beams of the Icosahedron.

The ranks of Falangists moved triangularly in multiple directions, to reach the Austral del Nótos de Borker, thus they would form the magic vectors of the polyhedron internally, triangulating at the top of the ram that carries an illustrious triangular phalanx, opening up the areas with its prop. vulnerable, to consolidate the buttress of the façade; the Áullos Kósmos, and pay homage to the apse that was filled with rejoicing. Sones of the philosopher Plato, made them regular or perfect in convex polyhedra, such that on all their faces were regular and equal polygons were made, and in all solid angles also equal. From this boulevard, the theology of Vernarth and Alexander the Great, fully professor and Platonic guide, will follow, making nomenclatures of nanostructures that affirm the volume and structure of the central sections of the radier, and their foundation bases shielded by the icosahedron in the nanotechnological scale, having physical material cells, for adaptation of structural changes and their environment.

The volume will be adapted microscopically, to analyze small particles with the return of the fourth arrow or Tetra Sagita of Zefian, absorbing nutrients and discarding the environmental threats based on carbon dioxide, to make a limiting membrane beauty, which moderates the nanoparticles that borer beetles were developing. The solidity of the partitions and walls will have the exact proportion of the nanomaterials, to adapt to the general area of the Mandragoron Nótos, which will ooze the surpluses due to the porosities, towards a volume highly resistant to invasions of limestone nanomaterials, and boulders that are made from the flow of the buttress of the apse that rises towards Aorion. The interior and exterior faces will be supplements of prayers of Prochoro, in didactics that will shield with the Antiphons Benedictus, and the hive of Plato's Icosahedron, becoming a consular material organism, and solid in interstices or leftovers from the feces of the Borers, until pasting and to reach the volume of the polyhedron, and its twenty faces pointing towards the physiognomy of the boulevard, tracing the general volume of the Mandragoron, and intercommunicating the quantum support and its theological harmony.

Says Borker: “if the organic cells operate with homage and with greater multicellular fields, here are the nanoparticles, in greater fields of fiatto, and in the slides that will recirculate in favor of the throat of the Mandragoron, and in the carbon nanotubes, essential elements of the biosphere and in useful layers of life that retrace the rest. There will be 20 linear meters in the area that lavishes the width and height, the projection of this scale of nanotechnology, will make the three-dimensional shape and a large voluminous serial in the Austral Nótos ”Vernarth's purging dimension, made him materialize at times and laugh out loud because he knew that everyone who was with him loved him! and from this fraction of faith, the Angel Raphael diagnoses them bread with archangelic essence; herb with great healing powers, especially in the dimension of the eclectic portal that allowed Vernarth to concern himself with material living beings.

Definitely, the second step of consolidation of the Megaron was established in the linear that the seven donkeys eagerly left, as masons and cabinetmakers who worked together with the Hexagonal Primogeniture. From this moment everything begins to have an inter-dimensional aspect, from the Invisible Eclectic Portal to the majestic geodesy and orography of this temple, which incorporated everyone for a charitable epiphany together with everyone in the Profitis Ilias, which was already crowned as the cusp Spiritual World of the Vernarthian Eclectic.

I hope you are the shore to my ocean...
I hope you are nepenthe to my pain...
I hope you are Christmas to my December...
I hope you are stardust to my universe...
I hope you are conscious to my subconscious..
I hope you are light to my darkness...
I hope you are evermore to my 2020...
I hope you are Nile to my Egypt....
Oh I hope you are me...
And I am you...

Once upon a midnight clear, while I sat there, drinking beer,
Reading a quaint and curious volume of fictitious lore,
While I stupored, nearly napping, suddenly I heard a trap beat,
Along with such horrible rapping, rapping outside my bedroom door.
“‘Tis a rapper,” I muttered, “rapping outside my bedroom door –
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember cooking stew in late November,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – that igloo stew filled me with sorrow
From a book I sought to borrow – reprieve from indigestion –
From the rare and radiant pains of self-inflicted indigestion –
My irritation was beyond question.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Annoyed me – deployed in me anger never felt before;
So that now, for the sake of my blood pressure, I stood repeating,
“‘Tis the pizza delivery man entreating entrance at my bedroom door –
Some pizza delivery man entreating entrance at my bedroom door; –
Bringing pies from the pizza store.”

Presently my soul grew stronger;
Hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is that I cannot tip,
Because of my relationship,
And so this house you may surely skip,
And thus pray stop the tapping,
Tapping on my bedroom door,
And leave me to my beer” –
Here I opened wide the door; –
Crickets there and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, steaming,
Doubting, fuming as no mortal has ever feigned to fume before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only words there spoken were curses I won’t restore.
These I grumbled to the void and the echoes did restore.
Merely these, and nothing more.

Back into my bedroom turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somehow more annoying than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely there is someone at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, who thereat is and this mystery uncover –
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery uncover; –
So I may rest and pray recover”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and stutter,
In there stomped a baby hippopotamus of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he;
Not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, climbed above my chamber door –
Climbed upon the trophy case just above my bedroom door –
Climbed, and sent my favorite trophy tumbling to the floor.

Then, this baby hippo beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said,
“Art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient hippo stomping around on the nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Hippo, “Dumbledore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly hippo
To hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning –
Little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing a hippo above his bedroom door –
Hippo or beast upon the trophy case above his bedroom door,
With such a name as “Dumbledore.”
But the hippo, sitting lonely on the placid case, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered – not a single syllable stuttered –
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “other friends have come before –
On the morrow he will leave me, as my sanity has done before.”
Then the hippo said, “Dumbledore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some bearded headmaster whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Dumble – Dumbledore.’”

But the Hippo still beguiling all my fancy to smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of hippo, case, and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous hippo of yore –
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt
And ominous hippo of yore
Meant in croaking “Dumbledore.”

Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the hippo whose fiery eyes now burned into my *****’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser,
Perfumed from an unseen censer
The television showed my favorite team
Now losing as I glimpsed the score.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee –
By these angels he hath sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy
Memories of this score!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and
Forget this evil score!”
Quoth the Hippo, “Dumbledore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! –
Prophet still, if hippo or devil! –
Whether Tempter sent, or whether
Tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert
Land enchanted –
On this home by horror haunted – tell me
Truly, I implore –
Is there – is there pizza in Heaven? – tell
Me – tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Hippo, “Dumbledore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil – prophet
Still, if hippo or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by
That God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within
The distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted pizza whom the
Angels did procure –
Clasp a rare and radiant pizza whom the
Angels did procure.”
Quoth the Hippo, “Dumbledore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, hippo or
Fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting –
“Get thee back into the tempest and the
Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no mark of dirt as a token of that lie thy
Soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the case
Above my door!
Take thy jaws from out my heart, and take thy
Form from off my door!”
Quoth the Hippo, “Dumbledore.”

And the Hippo, never flitting, still is sitting,
Still is sitting
On the broken case of trophies just above my
Chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s
That is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws
His shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies
Floating on the floor
May only be lifted by Dumbledore!

You well know
You left once before
Returning with a
Tapping knock
Upon heart's door

Plaintively pleading
Can I enter once more
To press into your soul
Promising a true
Forevermore

Of only us as one
And none other
A one to forever remember
One of the blissful sublime
Not a love to wither and die

Shunning wise counsel
Reluctantly I granted
An entry through
Love's window to my soul
Yet all again a lie

In my agony of sorrow
Of a love lost forever
Having found my Athena
I sip deeply from my glass
Nepenthe warm and sweet

From behind heart's door
Whilst barely breathing
Teeth clenching
Rage seething
Quietly whispering
Nevermore, Nevermore


©  2017 Jim Davis

Could not resist a steal from Poe! For anyone concerned, this comes from an old personal thing.  

From Wikipedia on Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "The Raven":
... "Christopher F. S. Maligec suggests the poem is a type of elegiacparaclausithyron, an ancient Greek and Roman poetic form consisting of the lament of an excluded, locked-out lover at the sealed door of his beloved.[14]"

Paraclausithyron (Ancient Greek: παρακλαυσίθυρον) is a motif in Greekand especially Augustan love elegy, as well as in troubadour poetry.
The details of the Greek etymology are uncertain, but it is generally accepted to mean "lament beside a door", from παρακλαίω, "lament beside", and θύρα, "door".[1] A paraklausithyron typically places a lover outside his mistress's door, desiring entry. In Greek poetry, the situation is connected to the komos, the revels of young people outdoors following intoxication at a symposium. Callimachus uses the situation to reflect on self-control, passion, and free will when the obstacle of the door is removed.[2]

From greekgodsandgoddesses website
Athena
* Athena was the Goddess of War, the female counterpart of ARES.
* She was the daughter of Zeus; no mother bore her. She sprang from Zeus’s head, full-grown and clothed in armor.
.......
* In later poetry, Athena embodied wisdom and rational thought.


From Dictionary website
Nepenthe
* a drug or drink, or the plant yielding it, mentioned by ancient writers as having the power to bring forgetfulness of sorrow or trouble.
* anything inducing a pleasurable sensation of forgetfulness, esp. of sorrow or trouble.

With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.

Once, upon a weekend morning, while I slumbered, loudly snoring
After many a workday of quaint and forgotten chores
While I nodded, well past napping, suddenly there came a scratching,
As if the paint was gently stripping, ripping from the bedroom door.
“He’ll stop,” I muttered, “scratching at my chamber door.”

“He’s only bored, and nothing more”

Deep into my blanket hiding, there I lay in fear abiding,
Doubting, hoping I could sleep as I had ever slept before;
But the silence then was broken, and the door way, old and oaken,
Swung open as the clever kitty, made the lock a simple chore
And then my dreams were gone as are the winds of yester-yore

I knew I should have fixed that door.

Open then he pushed the doorway, then, with padded foot and whisker,  
In he stepped,  the ebon creature who I bought that cat food for
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, like he who owns the household, perched above my pillowed snores —
Perched upon the feathered pillow which my sleeping bonnet bore —

Perched, and silently implored.

Then, methought, the cat grew braver, thinking of his breakfast’s savor
Poking at my sleeping visage, poking more, and more and more.
"Wretch," I cried, "the devil’s sent thee — a witch cat sent to leave me
No respite and no Nepenthe, but only the memory of the sleep I had before!
Let me quaff this kind Nepenthe and rejoin my final snore!"

Purred the black cat, "Nevermore."    

“Be that word our sign of parting, cat or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting —
As I threw him into the darkness of the Night's Plutonian shore.
“Leave my slumber unbroken!  Come you not with purr and pokin’
Take thy paw out of my nostril, and take thy **** right out the door!
Leave no black fur as a token, you eat at nine, and not before!”

Cried the black cat, "I like before."    

But that **** cat, never quitting, still is sitting, still is splitting
The recently repaired latex on my bedroom door;
And his eyes have all the burning of a feline that is yearning,
For the cat dish full of kibbles, sitting, sitting on the kitchen floor;
As my soul rose from the blankets, with a howling, futile roar:

Sleeping in on weekends — nevermore!

It seeped through my bones,
Made me a sputtering heart,
Lo this numbness,
See it in my eyes,
Touch me now!
Feel it inside,
This burning, white-hot cold.
I know you mean to tell me different,
That I may be over-reacting,
Over-imag'ning.
Thou skin has gone deaf to my calls,
Dead.
But tell me,
Lest thou eyes deceive you,
Do you not see mine own pallid skin?
See this now!
Dare not to tell me different,
Never mind, hold your tongue!
Thou face has already given away thou intentions.
Fix me dear therapevtees,
Take away this old lady's ailments,
Do not ail me.
Give me the Nepenthe,
Help me chase away my sorrows.
***** could be good,
Do you think?
I'll take anything you have,
Black Henbane, even Psilocybin.
Mend me please,
Stop this cold,
Make my days less dreadful.
It won't be long now.
Let this old lady go to death grinning,
However stupid it may seem.
I shall laugh in the face of death,
This old, sagging face shall laugh,
Just me and death,
Very old friends.
                                -**Firefly

I sip, poor
on my nepenthe
stroking skin
the glass holding poured antidote
I sip and swoon, devote
I'd swim in it
even as it takes its pities
never part with the piment
the earth stills
slows its cities
and I take a sip of him
the warmest regrets
gnaw at my regard
cathartic, quiet egress
my minds reach not so far
as to want for them again
I sip, so poor
on my nepenthe
drink 'til it pours cold
it offers up its pities
pardon any sentiment
of the sorrow it erodes
it offers up a numb
I can't deny consoles

Parable Ad Libitum Ex Varna: “In the lower and higher, a certain anti-demonological air carried a Keri towards the sails of the Procorus rituals, extending the Eurydice ship that came from Rhodes. He had on the floor of his cell some branches of Tamarisks, like Tarayes that vanished due to their quality when they expired in his own monk's feet and became perennial in his Oikodomeo, to raise with the Taray the re-transformation essences of the lexeme of greenness conventional in Patmos, being very deflowered in periods with high tempers, only with some secretions in which Procorus felt adventitious of its reflowering, from there and then in the anemophilous advantages of the winds released from the belly in sedimentary veins of Rhodes. In its alchemical anemophilia or movement of the inseminating winds, the subtle soil vanished with the force of the Lion of Sulfur that derived from the Cinnabar, and with the Anemoi wind that was impregnated in the capsules of the Tamarisk, under the feet of the acolyte. In the aquifer of the groundwater phreatic layer on Patmos, remnants were scattered so that in Pro Nobis they lay their demonologies, sponsoring Persian magics of the Post-Gaugamela Lid, I get in the Ex Varna with re-transfigured iridescence on Mount Tabor.

Procorus says: “This Tamarix or Tamarisk, has poured the limits of our Oikodomeo, to retain the surface plate and reuse it in absorbing the fire under my feet, compelling them to readjust under the igneous soil concentrated in the cinnabar residue, carrying the dermal prototype towards the saturated bottom of the salt larvae, which imposed themselves on the bruised beam of their skill, in some bundles of Tamarisks, showing themselves innocuous in the cloister imagination and right here asphyxiated by some Chaldean tribes, who felt themselves from the stand of illusionism of the Ex Varna ”.

In the compaction of this epic hyper fantasy in that instant, the dedication of the Gift was born to interpret the subtlety of two-dimensional variety that would seem until now, under the layers that were contaminated out of nowhere, by the mere fact of the whim of the augur momentum, which is finally restricted in the morphism of the Katapausis and the chamber of San Juan Apostle, being finally supported by layers and shawls of subterranean aqueous filters, towards a restructuring of the Euclidean plane and towards the vicinity of the plantar pedestrian zones of Procorus that were three-dimensional already in the construction of the Oikodomeo, for the foundation of the Náos or temple, which would be triggered when the Hexagonal Progeny arrived to build the Vernarthian temple with gifts of multi-purgatory construction, for the Oikos in Abode of the social unit of Aquarian spirits or Aqua that is terminated at the end of Capricorn dehorned. In mutual edifying peace and between both zodiacal proximities of the Oikodom, here every day spectra purged and rubbed each other in the archetype of the Megaron, which was intended to give in oblations and votive connections in the massages that the spirits of the Vernarthian universe gave them in their spiritual mortar, reconverted in their eternal fight to live in friction and in the brown partitions of the Megaron bloodless to inaugurate it as a solid bulwark, in the weak regions of the Hetairoi that cellularly snatches vitality co-energized in their extremities, of total imbalance and of bumpy patrons maneuvered on their feet crawling towards the karmic Saetas of Velos Toxeumas and Dorus unscathed. But feverish and threatening their integrity, when they fell and stepped on the Euclidean edge, opening from the designs of the Hellenic palfrey, becoming parametric in the paranasal of Kanti and their neighborhood spatiality in the Parthenon of Fidas, with Ikríomas or scaffolding that made them collapse of its coordinates with Mamdilaria and Agiogitiko wine baths on the Vernarthian body between the columnar of its Sabines and of the Greek colonies of Lacedaemonians of the 4th century BC. C., already entering into borders of synchronicity from the Erechtheion, falling from the Caelum, near all his teachers who helped him install the final tiles of the temple, next to them drunk with Nepenthe, by nozzles of intense rain of vine in the silent afternoon of the Inter-Cosmos of Athena, Handing them the poison of Velos Toxeumas, a priori... and before attacking any skin that wants to revive itself in the inoculated Vernarthian dreams.

(Procorus, manifested himself solidly in his solitude when he saw that Lacedaemonians and beings of the night accompanied him, in contrast to the dark light that allowed him with a single chandelier to expand more inaccessible in the semiglyphs and in the grooves of the Megaron, which glowed synarchically. in the plans of the new Monastery of Saint John the Theologian)

Mercurial Ambrosia / Profitis Ilías and Cinnabar

From the rudiments of the votive offerings that were outlined from the Megaron, a grammar was looming that sought terminologies in the lexicons of those who would intervene in the ruling party of the same patron twin; in such a symbiosis by naming him Mandragoron.  Vernarth came already ready after the fringed platform of the Acrotera modules, and in his affirmation of how he will appear before the plinth of Athenea and Zeus, who were awakening from a reminiscence of the Nemeton Druid, to go in the responsibility of the active life of austerity, and in the greyish roots of Zeus's oak that was rummaging, attend to the lively brushstrokes of three-dimensionality of the "V", which could be seen concentrically in the Pergamon frieze. The "V" emerges from the sculptor's cardiac center of escape and perspective, in the polys-perspective of gigantomachy where Athenea apprehends the suffering Alcyoneus by the hair in a deadly belligerent perspective and in convulsions of Satanic enthronement; Alluding to the apocalyptic epistle of Saint John the Apostle, on the vertical optics of the great Maker of pnemo-images or aerial nuances in the semi-open eyes of the giant suffering in Alcyoneus, with lost encumbrances from the maternal power of his matron Gea, for a polytheistic empire and adverse towards the border of the Christ anointed in unison, and of the better-known reliefs of the Athenea panel. Her contracted forehead and her belly convulsively are constricted, which only leaves us suffering and mortal fear. In the arranged thing the giant loses contact with the mother of him Gea of him; Disappearing land leaving you vulnerable. The sacred serpent of Athenea will **** Alcioneo by biting him on the chest (ibidem Vernarth's suffering pectoral from Bumodos, Tel Gomel.)

Nike will consummate the victory, and then from the exhausted stadiums of the Pergamon amphitheater, Wonthelimar will bring the Victory with the other "V" of the goddess Nike, also borne by Athenea Nikephoros. From this duplicity both are transposed into Vernarth's "V" as an initiatory pseudonym; that will graph the reinforced twin of the Hellenic genesis of Wonthelimar, articulating from this Prótypo with the genesis of the cardinal Mandragoron that will be architectural and deified Vernarthian hierarchy:

Cardinal Mandragoron

- North : Vóreios  (Zefian Boreal)
- South  : Nótos    (Austral of Borker)
- West.  :  Dyticá   (Sunset of Leiak)
- East    :  Aftó       (Equinoctial of Kaitelka)

The Cinnabar Tsambiko, had bushy inclinations with the Mercurial Ambrosia, for the good of large metropolises of Mercurial Pollen, for those of a single deity coming from polytheistic Pergamum, in a flaw that is centrally concentrated in the monotheism of the Mandragoron, which will rise from the rocky of Mount Profitis Ilias from the height of the rhizomatic basalts, to condemn those who betray them, if they are stripped of the Lepidoptera. In the same way akin to a bucolic immortal, in dietetic miraculous, for basal ingenuities of nomenclatures, from the focal point of indigestion that dies with the digestion of sacred food, led by healing perceptions and sensations of the well-known world of ferment. It could be a Backoi, Kykeon, or Nepenthe, preferring to be swallowed by the Titans, to later filter honey that evaporates and volatilizes towards the Sulphurous Cinnabar, containing the bi-compound and sacred Mercurial Ambrosia, to later be disposed of with a vile gargle to the disposition of mortals who were to be immortal like Heracles. From this mythological infundity, the potion for Vernarth is abstracted from smearing it on his nose and on his pectoral, so that his wound that did not heal does not rot...; perhaps his Hellenic heart in rubble anticipated the destruction of future archaeological works. Or perhaps to imbue it in the chest of Achilles, like Vernarth, but it would be so as not to resist fasting. Liquids with entomology and Lepidoptera from Gethsemane in flocks come to clean the scabs of the heroes, who are only able to resist such effusion and subtle prophylaxis, stinging Prometheus a single sip in this new Mercurial Ambrosia.

They say that heaven,
Is there in the skies,
And hell is beneath us,
Below those who died,

But I challenge this thought,
This belief held by many,
For hell is on earth,
Where men dwell aplenty,

And toil and suffer,
And seek a nepenthe,
But my joyous heaven,
Needs not a nepenthe,

You needn't look up,
It's not in the skies,
For my heaven's seat,
Sits there in her eyes

When I saw you in the gloaming
sat beneath old Herod's tree
The heralds made you think of one
so unalike from me
Weren't you a fawn who with them bore
O' such a troubled breast
That when you sat beside yourself
found there no form of rest.

And was it I that saw you there
Or was it someone close?
Is't good to question weary eyes
with sweet nepenthe's dose?
O' agèd doe, Ignore me so
to temper thine own soul
O' springtime eddies eb and flow
Cosset the wintered vole.

Sh.

Bring me your broken-hearted
your downtrodden
your shattered soul
I'll wrap you in my warm embrace.

In a nepenthe of bliss,
I'll make you forget
all your sadness, troubles and worry
and wrap you snug in gentle puffs of smoke.

Let me save you.
Let me help you.
Let me make you mine.

sinking through my shadow
down the oubliette
of my retraction
drunk upon
nepenthe: contempt
of insurmountable distraction

i can siphon
all this blood
into a staining chalice
down again
another round
and hope to
drown again
within the sounds
of screaming
stifled under skin

claws maw
ravenously
the inner walls
of a carapace
too far gone
in its accretion
to spare
the raving calls
the solitary
somber narcissist
of slow and painful
suffocation

eloquence
an incomplete attempt
to justify,
to anthropromorphize

and endeavor
i shall, forever
to cauterize this soul
but its far too cold
to build a fire

Tonight, I could feel the nausea bloom in the core of my heart
Like it usually does when I think too long on your silence.
I could let the withdrawals start,
The shaking and the fear.
I could ask myself
Has she forgotten me?
Did I drive her away with my honesty?
Why can I never shut up?
I could torture myself
With the notion that tonight you consume someone else's lips
And think nothing of me,
Glad to be free of my adoration.
I could crucify my heart,
Nail it down with the possibility
That you see everything I say and choose never to respond.
I could.
But tonight,
Oddly,
My fear is tableaued behind frosted glass.
I can see the outline of my agony
All blurry and dark
But I can't touch it.
It's like one of those sliding shower doors is between me
And it
All rough on one side so that nothing can really be glimpsed
And all the more foggy with the steam of the years just boiling off me.
My pain can't see me, naked and exposed,
And I can't see it, menacing and razor sharp.
We know about each other, but only by the shadows.
It is out there, outside in the substantial world,
The one with hard lines and cold facts
And a biting breeze that keeps the brutal windows clear as crystal.
But it is warm in here and I have found a sort of spiritual nepenthe,
A numbness.
I know my torment is solid; I know that eventually the cruelty of my mind will have its pound of flesh,
(And perhaps more)
But...
Not tonight.
It's not real to me tonight.
And frankly
I am
Just too ******* tired
Tonight
And too clean
Tonight
And too calm
Tonight
To slit my pride's throat
And watch the blood run down the drain.

absent, white hands gleaming dully in the dark
absinthe nepenthe, queen of Eden,
our lady of the lotus-eaters!
flush, the fruit, your cheek, rose-red
breath, your lips, and trickles red-violet,
half the seeds, open the box, strike the match, bite.
(I never knew why they called it original sin.)

they replaced you, Eve,
with their ****** Queen,
and oh! how they praised her red-gold hair,
immaculata, benissima, ave Maria,
and how sweet and high their voices in their chapels of crystal and gold
but how they gilded it all, oh Eve, how they did,
and how they gilded it all to cover
the searching memory of real gold
(who could they blame? cherchez la femme.)