In this Monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately
drowned  in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;
and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy,
then in their height.


Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
         Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse:
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!
         For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright
Toward heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;
Tempered to the oaten flute,
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.
         But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.
         Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
RHad ye been there,S . . . for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
         Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But, the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. RBut not the praise,”
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
RFame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.”
         O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea,
That came in Neptune’s plea.
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
         Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
Ah! who hath reft,” quoth he, Rmy dearest pledge?”
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:—
RHow well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as, for their bellies’ sake,
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped:
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”
         Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf **** the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the ***** freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so, to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold.
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
         Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That Sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
         Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

INTRO

What happens beyond the realms of  reasoning, where do the lines of  reality blur, How close are the boundaries between light and dark, between dusk and dawn.
  What takes us beyond the thresh hold, the point of  sunlight and shadows, Are  we lying in wait as our limitations are questioned? How many souls have been taken unwillingly to the depths .
         Fall into a place, this chaos which so quickly crept into me, slipping away bringing me back to thoughts of sanity.
  But tainted thoughts stain what innocence is left, making me vulnarble and weak.
  Corruption is tempting you to just give into its wicked ways, influenced by bad habits unable to be dealt with, your surccumed to the sins.
  Such problems now swallow you entirely. There is no cure to this disease, I'm fighting and pondering a hopeless battle, I see no victory for me in the end.
  I will never win, I fear and know this now.

CHAPTER ONE

After the silence entered me,got inside rmy head  ,the lack of sound drowned out all the outside noise . Oh so quiet my world became,except for a suttle  humming,buzzing which echoed in my ears, I could only make it cease with the voices in my mind,my thoughts which I could now hear, and I heard them loud and clear. I heard fear, panic,uncertainty, so many questions I had no answers for.  I told myself its just this happens,maybe its just age,it won't last, this silence won't last,right. Yet another voice told me that something has gone terribly wrong here,and that this is only the begging of my end.  Along came the silence with it then came isolation, one by one everyone I loved let me and has not yet came back. Not even strangers met my path, instead I came across loneliness who now won't leave my side, all alone left to deal with me by myself.

CHAPTER TWO


It didn't take much time until the whispers began at first they only came with dusk,the end of day,when the sun sets taking the light from the world. The sky dims ,lower and lower until all is covered with a blanket of darkness. Shadows creep in slowly cascading across my walls, they remind me that something wicked this way comes,the essence of dread is in the air. An unsettling aura keeps me from sleep, as night falls my eyes grow heavy and my mind is so tattered. Yet slumber eludes me for the fear is much stronger. I lye  awake yet another night. Up until yesterday only an unwelcoming silence suffocated me made my emptiness almost unbearable. Then,well then it was broken, in the 2am hour, a whisper entered my dreamless conscience mind,from no distinct place and yet from every direction both at once

CHAPTER THREE

With such length of time now with deaf ears, I instantly noticed the change of frequencies, though it spoke in a low,low pitch normally it would go unheard or simply mistaken as a gust of wind. But lying there uneasy amounst the darkness of solitude,lacking of sleep and being not of sound mind by this point, I had begun to speak my thoughts aloud, answering my own questions, listening to my own voice somehow gave me comfort when nothing else could. Whispers,quiet whispers echo into the night, for my ears only. I can't clearly understand what they tell me, but the tones of each word gave
off a unsettling undertones that sent chills through me, if only I could understand, but  my  translation of these whispers are inaudible, pinned down by a fear that I'm sinking in slowly,like quicksand,its slowing pulling me under. A catatonic scream paralyzes every part of me, and I can't stop this, this downward spiral into madness. A descent into insanity, I feel myself growing weaker as my mind struggles against  chaos and the discontent , my dreams are dying before my eyes that will not close so I might rest, no no lately the days have brought me only misery,and a question of my faith, it will not give me a moment of ease cause every night has been just the same

CHAPTER FOUR

Why is this happening to me, why won't this just stop, and let me be, this hope fades the longer I live this way, won't somebody come save me, I'm wasting away and I have no control , my will is broken now. How did I not see this coming, something wicked this way comes, it comes for my soul, every peice of me turns black, and it hurts until I'm numb, A sudden suffer rips over me just before dawn, I  understood the  whisperes after all ,go adead just give in, suffocation is near, taken into a sea of self despair, this life you live and breath isn't yours any longer, step by step you will stumble, until you fall, until your empty and hollow.  Where can I go, where will I run, when there's nowhere to hide, nowhere at all. I thought i saw a glimpse of the mourning sun before I fainted from the weight of realizing that I am far from the better days ,tomorrow will lead me further, is this real, or I'm I only dreaming, is this reality or have I imagined all of this, I just don't know these days, time laughs in my face, and I sit silent and still. Watching myself fall,and fall and fall

CHAPTER FIVE

  Down in the dark, an endless night, keeps away the sunshine, cause lately I've been stuck in the shade, wishing for brighter days that are so faintly seen in the distance, I fear none of my wishes will be granted, now many of will be destroyed. I can not change this spiral into extinction, helplessly I watch myself stumbling, crumbling, and slowly coming apart.
  As I live and breath, I see my life wasting away.
Choking on what is yet to come, everyday brings me another dose of misery and a lothing ache that spreads thru me , suffocation is draining me from the inside out, What is pain, I can't scream loud enough to express what has taken ahold of me these days
  All this crept in on me like a cloud, why me I keep asking myself, won't this just go away, won't this just let me be, did I deserve this, well did i , nobody should ever know these wicked ways and all the inflict upon your soul.

CHAPTER 6

Y So with my mind a mess so much so that my consintration strains each thought, I can barely function anymore, and sleep depervation blurs my vision,ive been seeing traces and objects that aren't really there. Plus add the pain, loneliness, and total breakdown of my will, the stress is more then I can handle, I bear a heavy burden, and the weight is crushing me, but what can I do, nothing, I can't run far enough,or hide where I can't be found, please save my soul I whisper aloud, to late the damage is done, this is how I will die, surcombed to a bittersweet end, one day at a time. Now adrift into the void that swallows me up ,and a darkness dissolved another
day

CHAPTER 7

Within a few days I have managed to lose everything, All I am, all I gave and all I  made of this life, Step by step I watched it taken from my grasp, I saw what I worked so hard for be stolen, so easily from me. Peice by price my very exsistance was shattering , All this has torn my world whole apart,  it is being taken out from right underneath my feet.
   Ya I've been experiencing some real trials and tribulations ,they say life isn't easy  but they don't go into depths of how ****** up it can be, or how far down you can fall without any warnings or signs that you didn't realize until it was to late and the damage has been done.  Oh no I've heard some really messed up stories about some of the **** some people have lived thru. But in my personal opinion my life started 2 days ago and it this life of mine since then has been slowly deterating,

CHAPTER 8

ya I'm a sad sort who isn't alive in a sense but instead a slipping mindless  lost soul, that has nothing to look forward to because tomorrow isn't going to be any better and it never will.
    When the sun rises up from the darkness  bringing you Into another morning your wishing harder and harder wouldn't come. That just one night would be your last and you wouldn't take another breath of the morning air. Why oh why can't you just fade out with the darkness,  why oh why can't these misfourtonate events of lately end, I just want everything to just end. And if you Were in my shoes I know for certain you would feel the same way as I do now.


CHAPTER 9

Y … Well I can not express these emotions that have, but they are intensely surging inside me. And I only wish I could share my pain, if only there was someone besides myself to share what I'm going through. It would make it a little easier, well probably not but at least someone else would understand,to feel what I do right now.
So it may seem like I'm droning on and on, Im probably not telling my story so anyone can make sense of it.
  So sorry if I haven't made sense or if I've told this scattered all about.  My thoughts aren't as sharp or clear as they were before this nightmare started, a few short no make that long,long days ago.

Chapter 10

YThis verse keeps repeating in the back of my mind, kinda like a
  song you  hear somewhere but your not sure where, and can't get outta your head ,you find yourself humming it subconsciously ,and this is whats stuck in mine.
  Here I am, Here in this place, Here in this state,Here I am a nowhere Wonderer.
  This is me, This is all of me, This is what I've become, This is who you see now, LA LA LA LA
  I hum this melancholy tune as sappy as it may be,all day long from morning to evening, 24 hours,no 48 hrs. , no 64 hrs. now. I guess I've lost count but it seems that there's been a broken record placed someplace inside my head.

chapter 11

YSo this brings me back to the present hour.  And once again, yet one more day which hasnt let up on any of torment continuing to be inflicted upon my mind, body and soul. I struggled through the sunlight until the moonlight shone down upon me.
  Naturally I find myself lying silent and still, insomnia plagues my weairy self , drained of any motivation. I really couldn't move or accomplish a single thing, I felt frozen inside myself, trapped in a almost vegetable state.
      Dropped in the velvet shroud of darkness, night has placed a veil over the land, and it has me in its embrass but instead of a calming drowsiness as  all others are effected, I instead have an allergic reaction.  For sleep will not come to my tired restless soul, not when fear enters the mind and stirs up the worst of thoughts, how can I relax with such horrible not stations.
      

Chapter 12

T  Here I am starring into the air as the clock marks 3 in the am hour.  I almost thought I might or that I could catch a few zzzzz's, a quick cat nap to recooperate,to regenerate my mind,oh yes my mind in such a desperate need of rest. As well as my body, my sore,aching bones, im throbing all the way to my very core. So when I felt at ease for how ever brief a moment it may last I willed sleep to come, sandman bring me to the land of nod, please oh please.
  But of course as I shouldn't of expected much less, I blinked and my moment was gone, once more I wouldn't dream,wouldn't sleep, wouldn't find slumber or any escape from my new found reality,
In a land far far away, fantasy and make beleive are put on pause cause my presence has been marked absent

Chapter 13

   They started in a low low  tone, the whispers.
Whisper,whisper,whisper, ascending louder with each tick tock of the clocks hands, clockwise,round and round the clocks face marking time, reminding me my life grows shorter with each tick and each tock.
  Ya t-i-m-e isn't on my side, oh no its not, but it makes me feel lm gonna die, and I'll keep running back, yes I'll keep running back.  Ya I can't stop even if I tried. N-o-o-o time isn't on my side, and that's a brutal fact.
Hhiisss, hiss, blahblahblah,yaddayaddayadda, mumbles of the incoherent voices, the voices I guess if that's what you want to call them, these whispers calling out to me, relentlessly tearing me down , thru all the twilight hours
of the night.
   With the morning dawn,  the whispers grow quite once more, disapating with the dark skies.
  Im conflicted by the sight of the sun rising, not sure if I welcome the light of day or curse another day I find myself in it.
  For one daybreak ends the whispers which I'm sssooo thankful for, but yet its another day I have to deal with the misery and pain that seems to intensify with every day that comes and gos and comes back for another round.
  
  

chapter 14


  I got a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror today and I almost didn't recognize the stranger staring back at me me face had changed, my cheeks where sunken in, I didn't notice how much weight I had lost, but I guess I hadn't eaten a thing for days I just had no appetite the thought of food made me nausious, so I went without.
  And my eyes they looked so vacant my pupils where so dialated like eyes gone black, to match the deep darkened circles under them.
Just a glance and you could tell ive been neglecting my health, I looked pretty banged up, a real mess. I didn't dare look to long cause my appearance made me sick to my stomach, in only  3 days going on 4 I seemed to have aged 10 years, and the deeping lines on my face showed it.
Oh what a sorry sight I am, and I'm glad no one will see me this way, even if someone did I had a feeling they wouldn't even care. I let out a depressing sigh I am damaged goods now, this black cloud that hangs over me has made sure to push and shove everything I had, all that I loved. Took my life right out of my hands and crushed it, so that piece by price my life wasn't my own anymore, I had nothing to link me to the life I once knew. Why me, I don't think I'll ever know. But what a tangled web they've wooven for me, and on that note I let out another mournful sigh.
  

Chapter 15

YSo I push and shove well corruption bends my will, no matter what I do I can not make it still. Instead Im inflicted with a disease that there is known cure for, my diagnosis is a fatal one with a slim chance to nil that I'm gonna go into remission and win,having a full recovery, , I can feel it in my bones and I just know I will lose this battle,no matter how tough or how hard I fight against this,this bad bad thing, this destroyer of souls, this devourer of free will, this monster in my nightmares that has crawled out from my dreams to haunt me well I'm awake. I think I'm going crazy, but Im watching myself go insane and I have no control, how maddning this situation has reached, reaching out without reasoning.


Chapter 16

  So here I am still as another day finds the dawn and once more I watch the sun rise, but I can't see the beauty in this anymore.
Now I believe this makes day four without sleep, without rest, without happiness, without any emotion or feeling, except the constant dread and emptiness that has drained me dry.
  I can tell this wickedness has grown a little stronger, its borrowing its way into my soul.
  Alls I can do is helplessly sit back and and wait, to just let this happen to me, and realizing this only makes me weaker. Im becoming such a fragile being, I'm almost afraid to move from this spot, cause my brittle body will most likely shatter to peices.


Chapter 17

Tick tock, tick tock the clock laughs in my face, it screams at me telling me that time has no meaning in my life from this moment on, and as the hands round the clocks face hour after hour, tick tock tick tock, your running out of time , your life is coming to an end sooner then later.
  Amoungst the buzzing silence of the daytime, I hear the clock somewhere in the background, its becoming a nuisance, annoying me just enough to where I can't possibly try to ignore it.
  I sit here silent and still, motionless , paralyzed from fea

I saw a ghost tonight
I'm not sure if it was real
she woke me from my sleep
I said hello

I saw a ghost tonight
but eyes can deceive
and it was dark
and I was just awake

I heard a ghost tonight
but ears can deceive
and other people can make floorboards creek
and I was still half asleep

I may have touched a ghost tonight
it took one swipe of my hand
and she was gone
I didn't feel anything at all

I have never seen a ghost before
I hid unde rmy blanket
telling myself it wasn't real
as I heard footsteps recede

-ketjil

rmy face has shrunken 5 times in my hands
been some time now,
and still im yours
now just run.

My soul is a mystery.
I don't recognise what I am, what I do.
Does somebody control me?
Why can't I just act as I want, and do what I want?
Why do I have these handcuffs on my hands, tight.
I want to free as a bird, fly across the world. With control ove rmy own soul.
But my anxiety, the fear. It takes control.
And I live in my bubble. With someone else in control over my soul.