Bard

“The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

He is amoral, he is untidy 
No truthful teacher but a careless clown 
Divided, lost by golden apple, 
In time  
which washed, and so was washed, 
By him 
Engulfed in the mire 
For which he lost the world 
And was content 
To lose it

Lavished on the Dead

“That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

Living, you are judged by worse performance 
Dead, you’re rated by your best 
Many mountains and so many rivers 
Range to make what’s deep and high 
Above all evidence Demonstration 
Flexes fearless of all flux 

Poets craft aspects individual; 
Shakespeare makes his a species 
Euripides takes every verse precept 
While Shakespeare has no heroes 

He gleans his works by diligent selection 
In the commerce of mankind 
Out of common conversation setting 
Cosmic store by human hearts 

Where agency is supernatural 
Dialogue is sublunar 
From chaos of comingling needs and wounds 
Shines full looking-glass of life 
Unavoidable concatenations  
Bring co-operations high 
And low inside the great machine to ease 
Then exhilarate the mind 

Bonefunny and so skilled in tragedy 
By craft and application 
(No pedant, who would sell his home and haul 
With him a housebrick of proof) 

My cottage may be mean and incommodious to you 
Who dwarf it in the shadow of the palaces of tyrants 
Yet could you see it glow with art and love 
It could not fail to, even for an iron heart, astonish 

Rasselas

“To a poet nothing can be useless.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

Call me Imlac. 
Watch me examine, 
The species and mountains 
That range over Earth. 

 
New combinations of 
of images ancient 
Turn and accumulate 
Spewed forth from a hole. 
 

Forest tree and valley flower 
crag and palace 
rivulet maze and 
Summer’s cloud 
Beautiful dreadful 
Awfully vast and 
Elegantly small 
Garden plants 
Animals of the wood 
minerals of the earth 
Asteroid and Meteor 
Sprite, Despondence 
Right and Wrong. 

The Rambler

“The works of fiction, with which the present generation seems more particularly delighted, are such as exhibit life in its true state, diversified only by accidents that daily happen in the world, and influenced by passions and qualities which are really to be found in conversing with mankind.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

A hermit, a wood,
A battle, a shipwreck, 
Satyrs and dryads and 
Lily and Rose. 
 
Select thy objects, 
Cull from the mass 
Of the rabble, the trash 
Of the side of the road. 
 

You’ve got to  
know when you’ve told ‘em 
know when you’ve shown ‘em 
The hazards of their living in a 
Snare of sage advice. 
 
To murder without torment, 
Does not absolve the killing. 
Let virtue expand a mind 
Pressed inside its vice. 

Her Tender Wing

“The Learn’d reflect on what before they knew: 
Careless of Censure, nor too fond of Fame, 
Still pleas’d to praise, yet not afraid to blame, 
Averse alike to Flatter, or Offend, 
Not free from Faults, nor yet too vain to mend.” – Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

Chatter, railing, 
Lashed and humming on 
The spinning top finds 
All its motion gone 

Nothing else lies 
In between the lugs 
But kindling, tinder 
Lumber Atlas shrugs 

Dust shake off that 
Shroud and live entire 
To judge in ice yet 
Sing in holy fire 

Of Blind Man’s Mind

“A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing; 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: 
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, 
And drinking largely sobers us again.” – Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

Of blind 
Man’s Mind 
What rules 
Is Fools 
Whatever deny’d 
She Pride; 
For find 
What Wind; 
Pride Defence 
And Sense! 
If away 
Truth Day; 
Trust know 
Make Foe. 

A Thing 
Drink Spring; 
There Brain 
And again 
Fir’d imparts 
In Arts 
While Mind 
Short behind 
But Surprize 
New rise! 
So try 
Mount Sky;
Th’ past 
And last 
But survey 
The Way 
Th’ Eyes 
Hills arise! 

Critickal Mass

“Both must alike from Heav’n derive their Light,
These born to Judge, as well as those to Write.” – Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

Bewilderbeast wanders
Desperately lost
In the Maze of Schools
Whose dark catacombs breed Fools
of False Learning
Graffiti’d on Sound Walls.

Yet here, even here,
A glim’ring Light breaks through
A sketch-line of life-giving rays
To warm the ground betwixt
Dull hooves
Where seeds of Judgement

sprout.

Watch

“ A Fool might once himself alone expose,
Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose” – Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

I find myself into a watch
Transformed
My cogs are dry
My springs creak
And floating
Out here –
Though why “here”?
Untrue, untrue
It’s barely a what less a where?
I alone
Mark my time

Uncouplets

“ ’Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writing or in Judging ill” – Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

Minder of Image,
the Bacchus gives that
(Find we Sight at)
Convinc’d Truth,
Whose Something,
Exprest well,
So ne’er but
Thought, was oft What,
Drest Advantage,
To Nature is
Wit True

Spectator

“I shall first consider those pleasures of the imagination which arise from the actual view and survey of outward objects. And these, I think, all proceed from the sight of what is great, uncommon, or beautiful. There may, indeed, be something so terrible or offensive, that the horror or loathsomeness of an object may overbear the pleasure which results from its greatness, novelty, or beauty; but still there will be such a mixture of delight in the very disgust it gives us, as any of these three qualifications are most conspicuous and prevailing.” – Joseph Addison (1672-1719).

Temper Wit with Mortality
Enliven Mortality with Wit
All tattle and spectating
Addison and Steele

Delight and surprise, with words and ideas,
And there you’ll find
Humanity Sublime
Expatiating where the buffalo roam

My heart is an Ætna
Hammering hot against
The bosom of my mistress
Pure and white as snow
(And just as cold, the wit will add)
Which melts in Euclid’s elemental fire

You can keep your false wit,
The coarse congruity of anagrams and chronograms,
lipograms and acrostics, echoes and doggerel,
puns and quibbles, husk and rind,
eggs and axes and altars
Scatter them like seed in the beargarden
For the low readers, les petits esprits,
the rabble and the mob,
To peck at like dogs

Give me mighty metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion,
all the species of the great howling zoo of wit