/lit/ - Literature

>>23143080
How funny, must be something doggy in the air, since we both did dog poems. I like the loose rhythm it fits with the aesthetic of the poem, I also like the Assonance rhymes, only those who truly care about the sound will rhyme “least” and “leash”

Though the first stanza line three, “this dog,” tumbles over rhythmically

Line two stanza 2, “potential “ is too abstract, too conceptual for the desired register.

>>23143080
How funny, must be something doggy in the air, since we both did dog poems.

“She does not bark, but she does show her teeth” I would give the Samuel Johnson complaint against Milton here, putting the comma there and continuing the sentence is so prosaic that if pronounced there’d be no sense of the lines and would make the line break arbitrary.
Likewise “time is about noon” if I was you I would consider more irregular lines here.

“With heinie sniffed, and Canine licked,
The time is noon,
It’s time we end our trip!
Returning to our room.

Penultimate stanza is that relaxed nature loving style which I do and enjoy and is based in a reality probably you did experience, for I have written similar having picked up a stick I really did like.

I would just modify the final line to

“Than friends we enjoy” and accept the anapest.

Later when I have time I’ll give critique of the other posts.

>>23145482
No, do you recommend them? If so I’ll check them out.

>>23143794
I don’t really have intent to publish and every time I’ve been published its been with friends and along with their works, I have no ideal of being published under my real name, so I’m fine with publishing them after posting them here. I post em here because I do enjoy critique and sharing what I’ve written for those who will give critique, A big part of why I post though is I like this sort of poetry and would like to see more of it, so may as well do that myself.

>>23142963
See this chapter https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67090/pg67090-images.html#THE_WRASTLING_FOR_DEMONLAND

>>23143344
Fussel’s poetic meter and form+ reading an anthology of English verse to find which poets you like and then studying them, then writing pastiches of them.

The three rules are

1= your favorite writers are the best manuals
2= you need to write and over and off again reread what you’ve written
3 =recite what you’ve written ideally aloud over and over, this will show you truly where the rhythm fails and can be improved and how rhythm works.

>>23143356
Maltais departs, first leaping with the gentle leap as common the smaller stature, then gaining height with each leap, until he does soar above the trees leap to leap, and does then leap the sky and traverse from dog-star Sirius off to the far-heaven.

Colin: death, there is no death, for death brings me back here again,
Whether I haunt or have been conjured by you, death and life is the same, moment of horror to moment of horror, the trauma of pleasure suspenseful of new-born-pain, I am one in prison,
Prison and dark crate, blood at a fast pump,
These are my days-length, suffering fear-strained.


At this Levriero departs, and hopes tomorrow he’ll have better results.

>>23143351
A cloud of burning memory forms above Colin, which does a while make all the fur wet and nearly drowns him, which does burn him with the bolt, does frighten him with the roaring thunder, and he does try to hide but again and again scourged by the bolt and full of rain-blister, forced out of den, Colin sees in these the vision of his master, and hears his words through the hateful thunder.

the beastmaster: animal lay down, hold there in place still,

The Iron rod beats the flank first, and its weight is pressed against the fontanelle-spot of a young collie puppy, forcing the head in submission down.

The Beastmaster: feel you this harsh pain, forcing itself hard,
Grinding your skull down, making you laid-flat,
Make to remembrance jolting and hot-heat,
Starvation ne’er paused save for a slime oozed
Drawn from a slain hound, it was thy kinsman,
Prison and dark crate, blood at a fast pump,
These are yours days-length, suffering fear-strained.

With a curved blade half-rust half calf blood-covered the beastmaster did lift up his hand and plunge.

The memory seeps to the yellow pool of Lethe, and the clouds go away with their scourging thunder.

Colin: I won’t return, I won’t return, I won’t return,
The painful cycle, to sleep awhile and rest, then to starving hunger, cold and heat,
My houndhood hewn daily and put into a dark place a moment, then a blinding the next,
I won’t return, I won’t return, I won’t return.

Levriero: by the frogs of the bog where the fog has so clot as to clog with a wann both the log and the rock and beyond to as far as where dawn to the morn to the Bourne of the night has its might even there to the icy most caverns and depths of the sea,
I speak a double word and do reveal the truth to thee,
Thou art gone and thou dead, and yet alive,
by thee thy master has become once more revived,
Go then and away hence to a home ne’er known,
Or else we’ll meet again and far to forest fringe we’ll roam.

Maltais: by humble loyalness I am already gone,
A memory of Goodness, i repeat my master’s song.
“I dreamed one night I came
Somehow to Heaven, and there
Transfigured shapes like flame
Moved effortless in air.

All silent were the Blest,
Calmly their haloes shone,
When through them all there pressed
One spirit whirling on.

He like a comet seemed,
But wild and glad and free,
And all through Heaven, I dreamed,
Rushed madly up to me.
Back from his haloed head
A flaming tail streamed far,
This way and that it sped
And waved from star to star.
And, as I saw it shot
Like searchlights through the sky,
I knew my dog had got
To Heaven as well as I.”

And now this phantasm departs,
My shade returns in full to ethereal heavens,
Of burning comforting fires,
And sweet, eternal, living waters.

Cont

>>23143339
Colin: but how’re ya doing the impossible?
And what if you fail and something hurts you,
Or by accident lash out and bite the hand which feeds us,
And feel lashes and tightening leashes and are placed tied up upon a roving street,
Where rat and cat and garden snake have freedom,
And what if I am starved again,
And what if a blade is taken to my groin?
And what if a hand does hold my muzzle so I cannot breathe or lick or lap ever again?
Levriero and Maltais both Bark with fury

Maltais: evil, evil, you speak evil, daily we’re given reign to run, these fields all resplendent with the dews and falling of fragrant blood are ours, I am from birth a thing of petty need, but Colin look upon your limbs and jab your tongue against the fang, more than the wild wolf you are blessed with intelligence, like the hyena you may in pack trap the massive creatures of the fields and tear off the testicle for a treat, like Doberman to bite and never cease, like shepherds to strangle until they do not breathe. Who has given you this weld of power and intelligence if not our common master? Why then will he stretch out his hand reasonless and strike you?


Colin: because he has.
It is true I have all things I have, a bed at times, food at times, but pain and quaking is forever here, I shake to see the gaze, I shake to think his face, I shake like dying chill or burning heat, my tongue wags but it is no pleasure I have, it is a beg and a bow, “I pray release me from the cage” but the tree-lights burnt by the touch of his hand are as soon put out by a strange movement and a clicking noise very like those high bugs.

Levr: cicada,
Which for a childhood do live in darkness,
But are then given to fill air and earth with echoing of song,
To climb an O’dris tree to height and sing their verse of love,
Unlike the false songs master does delight to listen,
The artifice of mating call, he speaks me them, of Ovid and Horace,
And many more, I do recall some words,
“Behold destroying phebus holds the spear,
And peaceful mars does strike a note to lyre,
And foolish Cupid has a pow’r here,
Until the fair image grows old and sere.”
And so they sing and mix the true and false,
The Beautiful and ugly,
for Pain and pleasance make a single liquor,
Wherein the Man refined by years of craft becomes drunken,
For this our lives are so determined,
A bitter flavor as to highlight,
A bitter flavor as to sweeten.

Colin: no for forever I see standing in the eye of my mind,
The eye which doesn’t have a lid, and cannot dart back or forth,
The eye which is still even as I huff and groan and sneeze,
The gangly arms and spider-fingers tangling,
the massive standing frame which never ceases to the forepaw for a rest,
The legs which seem my whole body’s length and width, I still see him and hear him.

Cont

>>23143334
Levr: Well-mannered with a learn’d etiquette’s grace,
And trained to leap just like the leveret,
At once a ball upon my nose,
And then I’m up upon the toes,
My dainty claws to locking and unlocking bolts,
Throw me a treat I shall not eat until released by some common agreed figure,
Master, my master, snap your finger,
Pat to my head, inspect my gums,
Throw strewn the flesh, I wag my tongue,
I wag my tail, look how I’ve grown frail,
My stiffles are so stiff I’m stifled quick,
I sniffle as I sit and sniff you through a bit.
The world goes gray, sad-happy day!
And yes the same, thou shalt obey,
See how well yes, there is much play in this.

Maltais:
stop the evil words, I’ll hear no complained bitterness,
Why add sad-grief to what’s good,
no, best?
Friend and father, a refuge within the high hand against the rain above and sharp stone below,
Which lifts us up so we do not pierce the delicate pad,
And loosens the poor-paw from thorny briar all-wrapped about.
I cry, tear-stains have made a rustic shade cover me,
Russet fields of grain prepared for a humans hand,
Which survive the harsh cleansing cold of winter-snow.

Levr: I speak no foul,
I simply bow,

He does a little curtsy, the spine curving so that his rear to head seems some twin mountains, the tail perfectly upright in stillness as some highest peak, some meat-Everest, and eyes all low

levr: I give due honor, look, strength has been given me,
Consider the wildflowers, none so dressed as well as I,
For breeze does come and shoot far off the petal,
And scorching suns above may burn and bruise their little stems as well,
And unknown men (much worse than known) may step and lo,
They are all rendered bereft, nude and ugly with unprimness.
forgive my shameful doggerel,
I know it beat and mockable,
But summer makes,
Not such a paint,
Bright as the face he makes when I do the impossible!
With timid shyness dread of tumid highness, Colin comes a-quivering.

Cont

Colin collie Comes Home Againe


dramatis personae:

Collin: a border collie whose body is all-colly black, but with a belly and heart all covered in pure-white.
Levriero: a Grey-hound of Italian birth, ever zany and full of skillful tricks, a veritable harlequin, standing up-right upon the hind-legs, with velvet grey-blue cape and hood upon him to mark intelligence and craft.
Maltais: a scion of melita who despite the care of a punctilious sybarite, demonstrates the constant affection and loyalty befit of Maltese renown, eyes curiously marked by brown tear-stain.
The Beastmaster: a man of swollen size, body flinchless, voice tone harsh and stern, the eyes are still, unmoving, the hands massive with a strength more proportionate to a man thrice the size, and holds an iron Rod heavy to grip, and has a belly to which the determining of fat against muscle is impossible.

The Invocation:

Now at attention dogs, I hold the leash,
And stir ye wild by a pipe of oaten reed,
Once Rise then fall, new dawn with Golden beam,
Until the final blood-ray coats its sheen.

Make woods to wail and wolves to whine,
The brooks to swell full-moon to shine,
The fruitful vale all-pruned deprived,
The tomb to fill by human knife.

By the Club were the forests made crushed to their pulp for a page,
By a touch were the orchids made mush from theirs bulbs for a stain,
By the clutch like to horses the pups who will hulk by the reins,
By the blood from their corses full-flushed by the bulk through the veins;

I will regain breath after the days-length,
Tinged by the pained-sense making the brain-reft,
I’ll be sustained yet, everything’s made-deaf,
Whether you face death, I shall retain strength.
Scene: a forest fringe all freak’d via refulgent light shining upon sweet-flavored dews, which seem like sugar to lap, full of Gold beam, and pleasant with the multi-variegance of flow’r, from the delicate snapdragon well-known to seem like human skull upon decay, to the world-famous rose alongside the merry gold marigolds and faintful asters, there do the three dogs run, mouth in open toothy smile and tongue all-lolled, though for some moments Colin’s eyes do dart side to side, and if seen well, maltais does give little weepings, and Levriero, with eyes white-circled all whale-like begins to stand upon his hindlegs as he’s custom to whilst balancing a red ball, he begins to speak

Cont

>>23134085
The penguin The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies is a good a place as any for his prose, but there’s a website, eldritch dark that has a titanic amount of his prose, verse, correspondences, works dedicated to him and also his works sculpting, it’s really best to look it up and down until you stumble across things you like. Or even go on YouTube and find recitations of his poems and short stories, they’re wonderful listening.

>>23133935
There’s trace elements since it’s George rr Martin, but if you read his own other works, Martin himself was a smith lover and pasticher, there’s also a whole weird fiction trend already running throughout fromsoft with or without Martin. Like it’s hard for me to believe witch with the amber eyes is not directly (either consciously or through subconscious) responsible for Ranni.

Decadent coomer magical power societies under decay/already ruined is like, a chief part of smith’s aesthetic in prose, as is the fusion of high fantasy and mystical-sci-fi, (whether Zothique or otherwise.) which you even get traces of with the star-Gods of the prior poems.

>>23133915
Tolometh by Clark Ashton smith

In billow-lost Posedonis
I was the black god of the abyss:
My three horns were of similor
Above my double diadem;
My one eye was a moon-bright gem
Found in a monstrous meteor.

Incredible far peoples came,
Called by the thunders of my fame,
And passed before my terraced throne
Where titan pards and lions stood,
As pours a never-lapsing flood
Before the winds of winter blown.

Below my glooming architraves,
One brown eternal file of slaves
Came in from mines of chalcedon,
And camels from the long plateaus
Laid down their sard and peridoz,
Their incense and their cinnamon.

The star-born evil that I brought
Through all the ancient land was wrought:
All women took my yoke of shame;
I reared, through sumless centuries,
The thrones of hell-black wizardries,
The hecatombs of blood and flame.

But now, within my sunken walls,
The slow blind ocean-serpent crawls,
And sea-worms are my ministers,
And wandering fishes pass me now
Or press before mine eyeless brow
As once the thronging worshippers...

And yet, in ways outpassing thought,
Men worship me that know me not.
They work my will. I shall arise
In that last dawn of atom-fire,
To stand upon the planet's pyre
And cast my shadow on the skies

The serious answer is that it’s very influenced as a whole by Clark Ashton smith’s poetry and prose. Pretty much explicitly to. His cycles of short stories are definitely worth reading in terms of style and overall quality. Here’s three poems by him.

The Witch with Eyes of Amber (1923)
by Clark Ashton Smith

I met a witch with amber eyes
Who slowly sang a scarlet rune,
Shifting to an icy laughter
Like the laughter of the moon.

Red as a wanton’s was her mouth,
And fair the breast she bade me take
With a word that clove and clung
Burning like a furnace-flake.

But from her bright and lifted bosom,
When I touched it with my hand,
Came the many-needled coldness
Of a glacier-taken land.

And, lo! the witch with eyes of amber
Vanished like a blown-out flame
Leaving but the lichen-eaten
Stone that bore a blotted name.

Song of the necromancer by smith

I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,
And spectres terrible and fair
Shall wake the riven world at noon.

The star that was mine empery
In dust upon unwinnowed skies:
But primal dreams have made me wise,
And soon the shattered years shall rise
To my remembered sorcery.

To mantic mutterings, brief and low,
My palaces shall lift amain,
My bowers bloom; I will regain
The lips whereon my lips have lain
In rose-red twilights long ago.

Before my murmured exorcism
The world, a wispy wraith, shall flee:
A stranger earth, a weirder sea,
People with shapes of Fäery,
Shall swell upon the waste abysm.

The pantheons of darkened stars
Shall file athwart the crocus dawn;
Goddess and Gorgon, Lar and faun,
Shall tread the amaranthine lawn,
And giants fight their thunderous wars.

Like graven mountains of basalt,
Dark idols of my demons there
Shall tower through bright zones of air,
Fronting the sun with level stare;
And hell shall pave my deepest vault.

Phantom and fiend and sorceror
Shall serve me...till my term shall pass,
And I become no more, alas,
Than a frail shadow on the glass
Before some latter conjurer.

>>23124008
>>23124293
I’m out of the loop what is this?

Written while in traffic

Hail Tetragrammaton the four-fold King,
Trail round thy glory-train about the Queen,
whose bosom holds thy son the wondrous Prince,
Whose body is the sephirothic Ten,
Where E’er do flock the baser muses Nine,
To sing the simurgh chief whose crown is Eight
Rays of sunlight born from the gates Seven-
Fold, whereby enoch glimpsed the star of Six,
Which holds the sov’rin dom’nince o’er the Five
Elements which compose the stainless Four
Kabbalistic worlds which are by the Three-
in-One made to reveal the mystic Two:
The Goodfall and the double-meaning Ace.
Come for I gift the meek-praise of a Fool.

>>23121687
No no I understand and I’m aware of gambit being a chess term and so forth, the problem is precisely that this is a very metaphysical style poem and even the best of them will receive complaints of pretension, I don’t mean that personally, it’s just a thing to keep in mind.

>>23121632
>Alas— I cannot bear the dagger in my back.

Not a playful usage of the idiom imo, too straight forward for a poem with Witt in the center.

>So I quit thee! I resign and now forfeit thee!

“So I quit” has a weakness to it, I think you’d have been better off by making the rhyme on the 8th and 9th syllable while keeping the “thee” in the final syllable but repeating “thee” in the next line, this would give some variety to the sound.

>And with no beating heart— no hope within my breast.

The ending is fine I have no complaint.

My ultimate comment is, unity unity unity. You need unity throughout the parts, unity in diversity, unity in conception, unity in register. Pick a poet, perhaps herrick and try to just replicate his speech style over and over, you’ll find yourself with more smoothness by repeated replication.

>>23094411
>My Love is like a bitter game of chess to me—

This may come off strange to say, but it’s dangerous to write about “smart “ things like chess, because if you’re not careful witt, metaphor and certain subject matter inherently may come off smarmy and pretentious, while there’s good poetry about chess and using chess allegory, doing this sort of metaphysical allegory and beginning by stating it very clearly, it is a dangerous way to go.

>'Tis fraught with traps and poisoned pawns I cannot see

Poisoned pawn feels like it’s just for the alliteration and doesn’t quite serve the metaphor and simile nor image, “tis” while usable you have to worry about if your register when using these sounds organic or if it sounds like you’re larping a different manner, you have to perceive of terms like “tis” and so forth not as special early modern power words, just see them as special poetic diction, but normative lexicon words, this line feels off because tis feels fanfic-like.

>I play these cold and calculating gambits too

Playing with idiom and common phrase is difficult, In the above “common beauty “ poem I show how you can stitch them, the problem is again, if Ill-treated the common usage of an idiom depletes it of its imagery and even rhythm, this line feels exhausted because “I play” then the idiom makes it seem like you’re forcing yourself to be relevant to the idiom, “gambit” doesn’t fit the tone you’re going for.
>Because I know not how to show my love to you.
Too generic and arguably filler-filled, too easy of a line, no real vision in it. Nothing memorable then.


>Oh! Is there ever time that I don't desp'rate pray

Remove the “oh” add to this “that i “ it’s too much.

>For courage that I might this broken heart display,

This does sound properly Elizabethan, any complaints on it are hair-splitting.

>And fear no curséd trap nor poisoned pawn's attack?

Curséd filler, try to restructure to have only curse and it’s good to try to remove repetitive words or phrases unless you have a rhetorical scheme wherein you’ll keep repeating. Here’s a Shakespeare sonnet where he does repeat himself intentionally, note the difference.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Cont

>>23120462
>>23120212
Oh I’ll reply I’ve just been busy. Lmao.

>>23056488

>I feel fits of frightful burning in my breast

Frightful feels forced, free ya fingers so the line flows better, by this I mean to say, high alliteration like this whole stanza is very doable in a good way but I find what usually messes it up is a common alliteration pattern, whereas a more variant distribution can produce a better quality verse

>I feel fits of frightful burning in my breast
—
This binding, bashful beating on my chest

Could for example become

I feel a fit of fire burning in my chest,
That fuels the forceful beating breast,

“Solemn fear” is far too vague.

>I know Not this nothing that I plainly seek—

The danger of Witt is that you can appear trying to show yourself witty, which is disgusting and imo even Shakespeare has examples where this ruins the line. “why don’t you go into the sun,
the problem is I’m too much in the son!”
To paraphrase some hamlet.

Foolish yes, for a fickle heart so strongly
Yet so bashful still— to feel so wrongly.

“Yes for A” “so” is all useless filler as is the so in “so wrongly” either write lines smaller or rewrite the line until the slush is gone.

>And again, I knew you not, nor you knew me—
>Yet still I, foolish, vainly think of thee.

If you want a good example of ego centric but pretty verse you need to look to Allen upward, here’s an example of a very perfect verse from him, it’s very herrick.

Sunshine
(from Songs in Ziklag: 1888)

Bathed in balmy odours
Sitting upon flow’rs,
By the rippling waters,
Thus we pass the hours.
In the trees above us
Gaily sing the birds,
Making pleasant music
To our whisper’d words.
Yonder in the open
Pours the sunshine down
On the stooping reapers,
And the harvest brown.
In the stream the fisher
Lightly drops his cast.
All around is happy;
Would that it might last!

>>23094411
The key to learning your defaults in a verse is repeating the line over and over with your physical mouth. The sound will tell you everything. Next post I’ll try to critique this one in depth, tad busy

>>23113179
My argument is I see what you’re going for but I think you need more erudition to make it satisfying, try to read Samuel butler, Lewis caroll’s poetry, and Samuel wesley sr’s maggots collection, maybe maybe Edward Lear and Thomas Duffett, I say these because if you want the non-sensical Witt which is still beautiful, these men would all assist in the task in various ways.

>>23119830
Oh it is, I also think it’s necessary for the serious poems to have these play-ones.

> How do I get as good as you? Any books?

It’s just a process of reading your favorites and studying them a lot and keeping your “pen sharp” by writing while stressing and stretching your skill to breaking points until you succeed in the harsh technical task, this then allows you to go smoother than (imo) others when you write without the many constraints, for books. Beginning with poetic meter and form and bridge’s milton’s prosody isn’t a bad start, but it’s really more a question of finding favorites and pastiching them and replicating them, and then replicating multiple at once. So for me to also answer

>>23119981
My taste range from William Blake and Swinburne and ae Russell, to d’urfey, fulke greville, Robert herrick, elkanah settle, the aforementioned Samuel wesley, decadents like Baudelaire, weird fiction poets like Clark Ashton smith and Robert e Howard, obviously the Bible as a whole and so forth, but where my verse is gonna seem odd compared to these is, I take a ton from Indian poets and Chinese poets, Specifically the mahakavya tradition of extreme metric/wordplay constructions like in magha and bharavi’s work, and I take much from the whole ghost-tradition stemming from li-he and meng-jiao, my rhyme and assonance stuff is 100% derived from studies of rappers believe it or not, ranging from tech n9ne to Royce da 5’9 to Eminem to mf doom to k-rino to kxng-crooked, for their musicality and rhyme play is actually unique in the global corpus of writings, only there will you find multisyllabic rhymes a commonality to the point entire lines may rhyme, and to which the rhythm of lines may be determined not by meter but rhyme, likewise I’ve study of and arguments concerning the Pindaric rhythm (I’ll post in the next post a poem wherein the second half I would argue I recreate an English equivalent by making iambs equal dactyls, epitrites equal cretics.)I even have studies and replication in some verse of Norse court poetry, late medieval alliteration, etc, and of course my first fixation is always religious and esoteric lit. But these are my taste, it’s best one read widely according to their taste and constantly replicate and combine, that’s the only way. Every good book is a manual for how to write well a different way.

will write critique of others verse in here later today.

For now, a poem written just now to keep the pen sharp, the first stands is intended to simultaneously be in trochaic meter but also have a scansion of

- u/ u u/ u u/ - -/ - -/

Diurnally as the bright sun’s footpath,
Traveling to the untread steppe’s stretched-length,
Covered with as by the clouds hued wool-black,
Separate from the erect dens men fence.

“Away for a while, the airs uh-meet”
“A way for a wile, the errs uh meat! “
“ah wayfir awhile the heir’s a mete!”
Each trip-oh-ling speech confusing me!

Now speak, no sing in song,
And bring the peace I long,
With ease released from all,
I’ll bring a calf you’ll see damask,
The bleeding slash leaving sashes
Of red breaths, to leak heavy like death’s sabbaths,
But these calfs sacrificed by hand not knife,
With Sachets yet no myrrh, my verse my tongue has struck another flood no unguent just my huffing lungs,
Adam an add uh man, an adamant will will still still with love,
I have a calf of praise, a flash the man unmade,
At last to have a place, to have a lasting place,
From having last in place, to lasting made.

>>23112851
Poem written while outside in the snow while in the city.

It’s hard to see the beauty,
When snows descend like dazz’ling gems,
And cities gleam diaphanously dressed,
And ghost-Haunt-Fog has all-compassed with its cold breath,
But chills invade the boney fingers.


What jewels of fire may warm the flesh?
When the hand cracks to grasp a sheet?
No turgid pool the whirlwind cools delight me,
Cruel tempests have my tepid days bereaved,
Thief winter breeze deceive me not,


When southern sun a Satyr rude and hot,
Doth confuse my thoughts with lewder mock,
When garlands are as fever-fed pustules,
And rays make faint and beige-grey the red muscles,
Then perhaps aches shall move my wants,
To strifeless climes enrobed in prudent wann.


No Oxen plough their wonted grounds,
No dottlin’ spouse by sonnet’s sound,
For the fallen boughs with autumn Bow,
And twists their brittle boughs for a con’quors crown,
And offers to thy hearthless Brow.

Begone then, gelid frost,
As well as you, lucid streams,
Far offs my rock from humid extremes,
as a coal burning in the melted heart.