From "The Fate of the Glorious Devil" plus an addition

From "The Fate of the Glorious Devil"

plus an original addition*

This page is Bobby Approved,
April 24 2000.

A glorious devil, large in heart and brain,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
The world forsaking with a calm disdain,
Majestic rises on the astonished sight.

"Another spring!" his heart exulting cries.
Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force;
A milk-white lion of tremendous size
Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse.

The haycock rises, and the frequent rake
Looks on the bleeding foe that made him bleed;
And the green lizard and the golden snake
Pause at the bold irrevocable deed.

"Ring out, wild bells, and let him die,
And give her to the god of storms...
   ( Words, words, words - these are not my words. )
...The bosom of his father and his god,
Brimming over with quivering curds:
It is this, it is this that I dread!"
      - My mistress bent that brow of hers
      And left them to the savage beasts and birds.

[From "The Fate of the Glorious Devil", a 'centone' (or, verse made out of 'scraps' of other poems);
the elegiac last verse added "by"* Russell Hess, April 15 2000.]

* Last verse actually from:

Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Old Ironsides
William Shakespeare, Hamlet ( - two different places)
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson / Lewis Carrol, The Hunting of the Snark
( d i t t o )
Robert Browning, The Last Ride Together
Lord Byron, translation of Rabelais' Morgante Maggiore.

- Page written April 17 & 25 2000, by R. Hess (hess1@bigfoot.com), Webmaster, 'Up Sky'.