#despair i court thee

[monotonous-minutia]

talk about an opera you don’t normally get to talk about

Martha is an opera that is so underrated honestly. I mean when you think of it, it has it all--wacky adventures, mistaken/secret identities, love at first sight, idiots in love, the classic soprano/tenor + mezzo/baritone pairings, bops all over the place, gay vibes, a conspicuous quartet talking about how quiet and fast they should be, adorable hijinks, a bass in a white wig reading from a huge book, exhilarating choruses, arias so beautiful they elicit tears and ensembles so hilarious they also elicit tears, and a libretto so full of jokes and puns you can barely keep up with it.

Plus, I love how female-driven the opera is, being primarily from the soprano and mezzo's point of view.

and the characters are so great. We have Lady Harriet, who starts off as your typical stuck-up noblewoman who thinks it will be fun to pretend to be below her station for a day. but throughout the course of the story she learns that the whole idea of "stations" actually has nothing to do with what people are really like and in the end (spoilers) gives up everything to do with her station to be with the person she loves and lead a life she never knew she wanted.

Lionel, her love interest, is kinda your typical dreamy whiny tenor but we love that about him. He's never wanted anything more than what he has and his relationship with his surrogate brother Plunkett is so sweet. they tease each other like real brothers and are incredibly devoted to each other. Lionel is immediately smitten with Harriet (who tells him her name is Martha) and at one point literally throws himself at her feet. his despair is pretty melodramatic but hey, it's opera, and Flotow's music makes us belief every hyperbolic statement. and I love how in the end (spoilers again) when he finds out he's been royalty this entire time, he rejects it immediately and chooses to stay with the life and family he's known as long as he can remember. going along with Harriet's realization, Lionel proves that wealth and station aren't as meaningful as true love and family.

Plunkett (which, by the way, is my favorite name ever) is THEE comic baritone. He's so gruff and sarcastic but deep down a total sap and such a sweetie. He is so devoted to Lionel that he puts his own desires on hold in order to help his brother. even when the love of his life is standing right in front of him flirting mercilessly.

which leads us to NANCY!! Nancy has my whole entire heart. She is EVERYTHING--devoted, sweet, sassy, quick-witted, vindictive, a shameless flirt, and has some of the best bops in the show. I love her so much. She loves Harriet and works so hard to make her feel better. she has sympathy for the farmers and maids right off the bat. she says she wishes that there could be a court for farmers next to the court for nobles. (the pun comes across better in German. I have a huge literary crush on FW Riese.) she is SO sassy with Plunkett which makes him immediately smitten with her and is such a troublemaker, knocking over her spinning wheel and then running away pursued by Plunkett and apparently proceeds to knock everything over in the kitchen and sasses back when Plunkett calls her out. (also, she and Plunkett are alone in the kitchen knocking things over for like ten minutes while Lionel and Harriet have their romantic moment, so either Nancy is really good at hiding or these two were getting a head start on their relationship. I really want a production where when they come back she's wearing his hat or they've switched shirts or something.) She gets to chase Plunkett with a bow and arrow (and her flock of fellow huntresses) like she's manifesting Artemis.

she and Plunkett have seriously the best most underrated comic love duet in all of opera:

(my favorite)

(another good one, tempo's a bit slow for me but the vocal acting is great, I wish they'd filmed this!!)

I love this duet so much, it's so cheeky and hilarious and sweet. it's different from most duets because it's continuing their fake-obliviousness, their refusal to acknowledge each other's and their own feelings, the hints and teasing building and building, with a sweet ending but also infuriating because they're not quite there! "Brotherly love comes first" "but then maybe he'll ask me" I CAN'T HANDLE THESE TWO they get this ridiculous little coloratura call-and-response at the end it makes me cry.

I could talk about them for hours lol. I wish this opera was more popular because I'd watch so many productions of this and love to see so many performers in these roles.

okay on that note some fantasy casting, as long as I'm here:

Renée Fleming as Harriet/Martha PLEASE!!!! she is so famous for singing "The Last Rose of Summer" it is an actual crime we don't get her in the whole opera. I'd like to see Nadine Sierra or Karine Deshayes sing it too.

if Susanne Mentzer were still acting I would lovvve to see her as Nancy. I think Joyce DiDonato would fit the role to a T too. Also Frederica von Stade or Ann Murray in their heydays.

I think Jonas Kaufmann would be a good Lionel. he gets some quality time with the floor in this opera. also the way he makes some kinda whiny tenors be endearing. Juan Diego Flórez would be a dream in this too.

I need Peter Mattei as Plunkett like yesterday. Simon Keenlyside was my first fantasy cast for this role and I'd love to see that too.

I want more people to know about this opera. I mean seriously, this opera has two of the most famous arias ever. "Ach so fromm" is on so many tenors' solo albums and pretty much everyone knows "Letzte Rose" even if they think they don't (yeah I know Flotow didn't write it but still).

the fact that so few people even know what this opera is saddens me. maybe because German comic opera in general is kinda neglected, and Flotow wasn't terribly famous, but by golly this opera has enough to carry itself to the common repertoire if people would just give it a chance.

anyway I love this opera, thanks for giving me an outlet to scream about it <3

[the-gap-between-worlds]

Kilgrim’s Crossing.

Parable The Fifth

Once, in the distant past, before Pontiff was Pontiff, in the venerable hometown of Pontiff Guineforte; there was hungry cattle, a field of golden grass, and a river between them. Pontiff Guineforte bade the villagers to build a bridge that the cattle might cross and graze on the golden sweet grass. But they had not a stone cutter to their name, nor a carpenter. So, with idle hands, they languished.

One day, when the Mourning Star was hid behind the world, and the lands bathed in Erra’s gaunt, red light, a stranger came. He wore a cap of broad rim and coat of many pockets. And from those pockets poured gifts, toys for children and tools for their mothers and fathers.

And yet even as the villagers praised the stranger, The Pontiff’s ever loyal hound, Kilgrim, guardian since birth barked and nipped at the stranger's heel unprovoked.

The Pontiff presented to the stranger the sign of the White Star and shouted “I bid thee now, in the name of Dei’Us answer me thusly: who art thou?”

“Cruel presumptions and cretinous demeanor. You do the Mother and Father poorly, friend Guinforte” The stranger replies.

But the Pontiff remained resolute and thrust the sign forth “You will answer me thusly!: Who art thou?”

The stranger sneered with crude features and cast down his hat, unveiling a row of horns black and sharp as the Nyx moon! “ I am Baalphegor, Architect of the Inferno. Know me and know gratitude, children of the Dawn Star!”

“I know of thine work, demon. Thou who make the playthings of Hell. Repulsive! Begone!”

“Not yet, child of the heavens, for I have one more offering to make. In one night hence I shall build you a fine bridge of Ashmedai’s own stone, free of wear and certain to stand till’ histories end! But in turn the first soul to cross but for your cattle shall be brought to the Inferno, to serve in my court as a beloved guest evermore.” And Baalphegor smiled a demon’s smile, for he had sought to steal a righteous soul from the Pontiffs flock

“I find your terms reprehensible, Demon-thing.” The Pontiff rebuked. “‘Fore we shake hands you shall make three promises. You shall commit no evil as you build this bridge. You shall not use stone of daemon kind. Fie. More and further, your bridge’s stone shall draw no blood nor break no bone of Dei’s righteous.”

“Indeed.” Baalphegor sneered, for he had schemed much mischief. He had wished to steal the wood and stone from their homes, and build tiles of sharp stone upon the bridge. But in the Pontiff's cunning he had ensured no such thing would come to pass.

The Demon slunk away into the water below, and left the Pontiff to his choirstry. Before the first dark, the toys and tools were burned as the trappings of a Poison Chalice they were. But the villagers' fears were not abated.

“You have made pact with a Demon, good Guinforte! Now one of us is surely damned!”

“You, my children, must not despair, for Despondency is a sin of the Logismoi.”

And the villagers were quelled by the Pontiff’s Wisdom.

On the next dawn, heralded by the rising of the Mourning Star’s pure, clean light. The bridge was done. Rather than stone, it was made of ice, cold and unyielding as the witch’s filth breast. It damned the river surely as the work of a Beaver. Sturdy as it was, it was still a thing of ugly, for it was made by the hands of a slothful demon, worthless to all and deserving only of scorn.

Baalphegor waited on the bridge’s other side, alight in arrogance.

The Pontiff, though awroth that the bridge was made as an unsightly discomfiture, was bound by his promise. For all mortals carry their own burdens. The time had come for sacrifice.

He tossed the bone of a saint

And bade his loyal hound to fetch.

[libidomechanica]

Untitled Composition # 10393

A Meredith sonnet sequence

               1

The sacred ring what rang with thee, Cogniac!   No skill the fair hands and where the third is   neither throat. Was Juan,—who, an awkward she can seuer. That of the involuntary powers conspire, and drop at will not   enjoy. So that to shines so in spite of   deare delight. Summer’s day will notice as steel? To favour sought not perforce me liue and rough. The crew with her hart. If thou in   this dubious sign proclaim’d her not   dissolu’d through all or parch her face. You of the book to mind. Whose lofty lookes delight; dreaming heart gazing upon a hill,   so brimmed with his victory. They meane degrees   prepare a face with stirrup, saddle-bow; if thou hear’st me thus beseech thee, Cogniac!

               2

So he says, Tis so: ’ they are pale; young Frank   is chief flower was interrupted by   a simple pin—they will for because the world encompass, and striking? Moons changing diamonds should have been bound the hart, a pretty   price must harbour of the dead, and long   in her flash’d that they talked, above the race is slight substance. Ne any the first relicks to be discharged of the tidal dark,   and in anger not the moment before   her hart-thrilling my key to true calm. By the vain kind which are not in darkned be. Paying what rang with the dusky parts his   tenants pass’d away too fast; his snout digs   sepulchres where lay sweet hue, which would praise deserts scorch the fierce triumphant, and me.

               3

Had pressure, and fro with shame. And here was   not last receives. What is mine; this fathers   rose to blast their tongue cannot love, ’ quoth Adon, you crush me; let no thoughts bedecked her, one not learned ladies,—who but satiated   at length to helpe his breath, or lend your   hair. Were dabbled with a grove, and like awe, that theirs, made a hundred dollars for Jock of Hazeldean. Brow’s repine; where the should   I haste she goes who had given away   her thorns, nor stain thy beauty dead, black and unruly beast: and they burr, burr, burr, burr, burr—now Johnny well, yet from paradise;   and being cold, dull and vnto me she stroke   of two oaths’ breath goes, and so these, a lady friendly sighs are taxes on our knees.

               4

Now I am waiting till you when ye   behold two Adons dead! And here I give   the cared the hermit’s carnal ecstasy, till human power to smell, and once and quench’d heart shall tell ye how smooth than nominal,   and retossed, aloft, where they should   be very instructing, desolate, doth bring, ere Cuckow end, let her, both court and seen in safety to the roofs, and hearken   if his friends begun, end with this chaunges   to be moved by the praetor bent, nor brag not of so sweetest son, and nuzzling makes me like arrowes, which you to an oak,   where your face at the fair unhappy maid,   while thy selfe and dying smart. Yet, hadst hear two women; they view’d each other flocked tight.

               5

Words; and kisses, thief that smiles with a golden   tresses gloomed athwart the outside   of her wayes this one on shore of loues immortal hand she hears, which said, our only these blessings which seemed about: Noli me   tangere, for the presently beat. Then they   should move each passion more sent to clutch for a brook a wordless children still; sweet dream change the playne will say tis very word again!   The rock, and left Thee Living and therefore   O loue, that things—for I flattering in ischskin, ’ ousckin, ’ iffskchy, ’ ouski: of whom we shall turne to the same against my   selfe and friendly sigh for his lips shall the   next brooke. To eye those sweet, as if they will, seemd the light slept on the stars were affied.

               6

A thousand double shows when you know despair   was Hero, with tempest of all within   the spoil, with flashing in the hears the powre of loue, while to all nymphs pursue him was such foul flaws to hear a little ear’s   deep joy to London now! The while repenting,   and Juan interposing one’s own Heart’s lead, melt a harder heauenly matter is his trouble young girls are performed, the Rhodian   state, was it not white? See! Of unknown,   and heaving built with pleasure suffered you go. Within her louely fyre, whome throng, this never; tis much more praise of a child but   inside my force she spoke, and all the world’s   tide is bestow their grief; all enter, healthy Sestos here who on Love’s golden bee.

               7

As ever sheath’d him in the kindlier days,   and now should, welcome, but to prove, as   hopelessly was so lucky place, and vnto heauen or her said One who ne’er could aught renews; these force, his will may will ne’er had heard your   heart. Did sacrifize vnto your moderns equals   he sullen, still would scarce a soul that’s the lightened up my head. And, being lost all his tale, as if the pressed be by him   amearst without a soundly sleep. Thing but   my rude work of glory’s van. Right I came, and to their hearts again-her arm lifted, eyes on fire: sits mourning weeds. ’Er each severance   ruled! At apparitions, signs, and   upstaring fault I am but a deare exylde longwhile alone can explain it.

               8

Soul and therefore, since for other laws: a   kind of granting, ponders over the Border,   to bed. Of hardest steep our hearts of telegraph they found no fault cleanly out; theyr wanton talk attended horse than she   can no horsemanship of nature stood, tied   to make the wind, its pillar, not alone; the change in thine own begin? Own dark garden night, though tame. Till she lies my business   is call’d him in some shape suggestion which   now his loue: in which the Soul that’s the queen o’ womankind, and cannot lyfe sustayne, and hasten now apace: the strooken, await   the world’s art for each other’s arms, which   men will not blind his worlds pride bow to a bounch of Counsel—whereby much greater moan.

               9

And look and hauing pine and always is   complexion seek, and pensive tendance in this   parent is love made at lengthen out thee, drop heavily down,—burst, and kisses in the distance made thee, that aim and his natiue   place. That paint a siege, whereon she was, and   all kinds of benevolent machines, my loue pined hand and with that may farre in vain she stare he red for a hero lies beneath   their day; the tincture of vermilion:   and the length dissolved to die, old Susan moans, poor Susan’s life he sought in vain of gold: and warring nature’s error, as to   look in it. And now all delight in such   art as truth’s annoy to new desire keep a chronicle with pompous roialty.

               10

Sits upright, still hanging like diamonds in   water white ponies, can go gallop on   force, though long; all ages, though Wilberforce swayed to her frowne me drawes, her to be seen. Drawn in Russian vessel drove before   they look’d into all, but death deadlier   engineer’s steed and polished by some sweet embracing bushes, a moment at this worlds gladnesse: seeds springs. The ground; if Yuorie,   her wrath renew her nose, he gains his   causeless, or fourth wife, or victim: all the tree of my hair for love their tide, being put to love to rise. She look’d on as if   in prepared of seeming nothing wind and   cleaves cover; I knew the envenomed dart, and found to herself too much it grieves.

               11

And when cloudy looks again with Betty   o’er a waste it selfe nor other the gilded   monsters only by her said One who loved blood; if not worth a copse that awful kind—I have known them their naval matter:   we were strapped its applause. Or at the impress’d,   they him with one full many a dropping that Angels blessed above. Where is, too, many ages, for, nor in nothing the   foremost o’ them all, which the wound, and, for   love my military tower heauenly fyre, the gentle queen of love, ’—thus chain’d, each in taking no fair to lose, he strive   infection know; nor port they lie upon her   tolerant enchanted slope in the middle of the blushing roll’d on, ducks as quick!

               12

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close awayt   to catch her thirling car from Latmus’ mount   to half of that? Themselves without sometimes seizes warriors of thy lore to add yet to nestled in the first relief! A minute   past, and use good blackouts, do you know   a moment—and all her worth him is bearing sun; for much debate; but knowing worse and golden bee. Had held it out; and all   things and all the rest by cool Eurotas   they been cut, and many seeing the hum of lonely every limb, and set the victuall’d and burden would vouchsafe my plaint to   half of that paint a siege, wherein she stops   his horse, among the siege to raise, as well, for vice is always signs to tenderness.

               13

By this, poor things immortal butcher in   this said, I have known the hour or more to   favour and glory might bring a desire, with cloudes is summoned to Cupid. For Jock of wedding cake and never things;   so Stellaes ioyful face, some boy would the   sapphire visaged good zecchini, but hauing pine, and I dived in a hoard of mortal fingers tying my key to true   calm. And in her mangling. Cried Betty put   his daring to me. From th’enameled sky all her prayses yet be chaste. Now Johnny to the eyes to seize love of you and   sharp, on which I haue lackt the capital,   after the first defynd: and euery minute seemed, as if a magic cured. The year.

               14

Wind slow, glazed o’er Longman and Johnny’s near,   quoth Betty Foy? Where when this planet point   his sinewy neck in turn; and those on what of multitudinous is so fair and spotlesse pleasure and red, and people   passions, frantic, I shall the moon decks herself   and now no more; the beauties grace. ’ Heaven’s Zone glisters echoed frosty Caucasus; ’ but not drink, lest any tyrant, have   lost i’ th’ flower as May never   do him harm. Chase; I could be, as soon as her use, and swelling-place, not vsde to fright. In heaping up her breath forth to rest that   thrives: save wed along the which her mould   celestiall hew, made attonce too short, this white hair of grace; which some promoted couple.

               15

Very fine; which I should sit for men’s reverend   fathers smile; then the pavement with kissing   brest. Thou hadst hear that deare foe, and scoff at human filth that with the loved rashly led astray? The real world so great is not   decreed. Oaths of azure palace and began   to gather’d up, in shade to blackened ear. And Lilia There are mystic books, with one blights not it at all. And lament   remained, that you’ve heard, what duty to fulfil   yourself, and the Dolphin when thou find none other worshipp’d be; and when I feele the springs to stir in. Specks of chain   mail one by one. And all the ocean black.   That were when cloudy and fair peace, but having no defect; their violently descried.

               16

From sin, may like one that most irksom night;   there was controlled, but sometimes thousands of   benevolent machines. The broad ambrosiall meat, and former vows, your so happy in my mouth to keep her eyes are fired;   love was then be neuter and o’er and hauing   hare, or at them the shore; known but talk of college, only longed to see how in his back, his breast; thou art the stalk, and dreads his   passed the mere sense by nature or their years.   A vast, unless it be a boar, not alone. Its slender bit Beauty may they knew the bed she and, as his mother watch’d, she   gazed upon each endearment shapeless as   he his public wealthy coof, tho’ I mysel’ hae plenty, making my loue cherish.

               17

I mis, all careless life in thee is slain.   Then followed to mar the town, or she tune   those discourse of kynd. In great her down—will clear away the mellow, when in hand here was not soundly sleeps well as any mill,   or wrap about you might help a little   think’st thou wondered at their hollow as the bed, susan, I’d gladly youth, forgive, if I forgot—gentle breast; thou art dead;   and wild, even heroes—and such poore captyued   heretofore: in his waistcoat, and canst prevail again. Fainting the moon’s in her pale, i’ll be in sport—of that he finds   mistaken; few are slow in slaying him, who   if living worse than for theirs whose names at Moscow, into rhyme; yet their layes. Oh me!

               18

One full lips, and not much to praise him up   and, like to entertayne, and their dress was   but changed it, I do not know the very soul believing lover, bronze and rave, and, being stream that in silence, they saw, but   each drop they should be lynched in the ocean,   though it in a mighty king, that leaders of random sweet warriors of the evening, ear’s deep-sunken eyes, and quench’d heart; to love   at all, came lovely boy that nursed of hollow   sea’s, mourns for this great; if stars go waltzing out of time, confusion, and all kinds of whom we can it beat, the lassie o’   my heauen vpon your arms, o, gie me thus, my   Katie! The Powers which she wished he lay beneath the silent shore awaits at last.

               19

They sought so heauenly beauty doe behold.   But there were joined. Knocks at my call; my chosen   few with Love to keep it; being slant in a wondrous excell’d, grew kinder, and wat’ry star when truly not let it lay   the seat of the bent, and from the eye alone?   Burn the flings, all deep enraged, his pony now doth scratch’d down thrall, that soon he rose his choice the dark, cracking vestals and Wills   and swallow Venus’ eye; whose nun you are   as straight from Venus’ altar, to you, and beauty dwelt. The devil now no more,—her face wherein she stars asham’d of day, for   ever,—would it happen’d the Cyclades. And   now his brow’s repine; but the vessel of the wooing: melodious dismal knell!

               20

Had she not be, seeing thus, her links of   deare foe, and listens, but we, unworthy   thou hast made my Lady think I have wrong done but hard hoof he would say, This fair subject of thee thy crew. And pray, and make   immortal things; she take except me as he:   for yet she complexion shone great white with all frosen cold: but overwrought with languish too, no matter; we should have been near.   A bitter is than their first in that day   would be—a lioness, to the chin, and thus he cheered: O Rhodian crew, the lovely caves, as scorning wish to appears a heavy   head lolled brow and deck thee wronged its little   time. Moved by men of more wound and obstinate, and though the blow; and communion!

               21

Rustle the rest on its shelly cave with   venture that neuer thoughts the other this   fashion I have spoke of midnight so bothers to breathing-while I kiss Anthea’s breasts. Stella, which adorned, he read: come down the   arm, the morning came, some love one, what poor   old Susan groans I never shall statue- like, her body shaded with all which thou unask’d shalt not reaped there was a maid whom   heaven is Cupid’s myrtle was resembling,   he went, as tedious, wooes th’ authority. Her nipple learned nature does natural order of our set, five   other Sestos every friends me now. For   his horn: anon she liked it and Johnny do, I pray you not heare, may scarse be gone!

               22

He with sencelesse bloud defylde, by   Fenelon, by Luther, and forlorn. Or a   strong, he with smiles, these Angels heuenly with the prison’d in thee for one somewhat green which Neptune’s glass and pondering the   field, to see you hardly spared amends forth   her three, I feel my flames augmented manifold. When separate: the soprano might head, at night, let her, being spright, the shiny   beames darkness lie beneath it strange   goddess held and in her feet: an uniform. The head with another was already, known a crib. Although he never told;   while Pasimond a lawless bargains may   I by no means my wearied mind, let it suffice, but Fortune came in her excell.

               23

Itself, but she holding up herself her   own back to me. Sorrow through a wave, walk’d   in a yeelded praise if a magic powers above abasement shews, his glance doth show, is to a woman bred: her loathsome   limb and other was nine, whose lighteth   on his shirt, was drown’d, then can moue her? Their anchor under and by a flea; and the Lily-white Boy is a pond of yielding   ransackt hearts and mild the same; whether in   this of graves, and all presaging a most luminous, gemlike, ghostly woodpecker, hid in the Danube’s bordered brain, full   of powerful god of amorous   Leander on her shall have he did lay, he burnt, whose her leaves an index to a ball!

               24

Hot, faint, and my tunelesse bower: wils   him awake, and the very prepare you   care to prove, and made to sit upon his dark when she was once romantic, and at her: to cast toward things to pearl t’adorn it   glistered the power seemed the frontiers   he vse all beasts with her that seemed to such a crime. It seem’d absent still; beauty and long lacked it. That Lost with Tears! Dance on the   maiden Aunt. Then love, than when thou art all   desolate, and kings who laid about to be perchance that I am forsworn, to me resign their naval cells, and Famine,   with a boy of saintliness was but late   in the rest: some dainties, she traine. More white Muse-brows. To that thou live a thousand wrecks?

               25

And, as she past melts mist-like into her   knew what is become of your cruelty.   Is it they talked and that broke. So Ladie now to you, the cocks did crave; but ne’ertheless I hope to scale the fox which wander   carefully everywhere low voices of the   Ages, and the bridal house, its patterns on a boggy walk, he flitted to sink, but we allowed Cupid’s bow she seeks to   menage loathsome carries with avarice.   No eies be Saphyres plaine, what follow me, then why not a thousand wreath, I tie the sovereign thing were, sits upright on earth   I cry for still. Which now there other could   trust in her bed, and gaping o’er her naked is, and fading and cry, my meaning.

               26

Most happy date bids them slay, breaketh from   your fortune even in the slender was   all Enough—we two will bring a peal to shake hands and be blest; foreknowing Hermes prior to cross the curious cooks,   your imprimatur’ will you leave her lips   be Rubies foundation of the house, without audience, and beauty treble; and if you would an hour come to lead your hands:   but base: base in respecting, the loss alone,   is swifter the porch with, God forbid! Begin and go, and lonely than all roses nobody, not even the Flame that,   passing streight with his rein, and rymes, seeke   her goodly light; a thousand men, who loved music swims back to tell. An uniform.

               27

To Venus, but his proud sights, that true heart   that treasure: weightless as amber, ancient   hand, and seems still at the acacias, and I’ll awa to Nanie, O. That it did, as a storm sometime true news, sometime false alarm;   and then run out and to lack her joy.   ’Mang moors an’ mosses many, and hauing her owne mysery: but suddenly repenting, he on him thence a half-consent involved   in sweet with sorrowes of my purest   part: with meeke humility, loue is lyke to a mortal worlds glorie is but drag her down and less night into treat the large   dark she lay beside that northern shore and   scorne base thong from the sky and then my ioy wil be thine own bent; I cannot endite.

               28

And, as he sprains a blessings whereof the   world is shortly he had he not dealt with   dearth, before her form, with which her cheeks, she shouldst hunt the middle gardens standing at the table of pirate crew, who came wonder   although the room, and scornfully, and   haggard with Sisyphus he sport: the sail that the winged affected? That will not sleeps alone; she fort, and sees a great black and   unto Colchos borne: her worth! Then say, shall   I know of a novel word in my youth, forbear to touch even her kind. Which many a sound she just’-save change in the moment   to find the sway of writing with my   desk turns what was wont to see em, but none maybe with flashes o’er you cannot guess.

               29

’ Few they both do stand, threatening her fears and   to hear nor see, ye shall roll before, if   you’d express my griefe with such a guide. More; they once believe in it and being she. And now his words so wise as birth required,   for as you will, they can be got a   traveller bold, then loosing one, thoughts would condescends upon them smyle: the seasons’ quality; nor can Juno sweetly on   his mind is hush’d before was not harms distinct   in individual beauty grown, a judge of the many Lilias—played the motion and sire; subject that beauty.   To see him—for he hasty hand with   a widening sight, they took its stations; and me. Him by the bayonet these twain.

               30

That in each more reflect; three fireships   lost or slay the golden pomp is come; for   all my heart with one convulsive ground was strook. For our guide, let Heaven, star after where their full brightnesse whylest I be condemned   be of use, politics; they bid thee   it is the sniffer. I could not keep, release, where I something so mock-solemn, protection; and yet on tiptoe seemes to   be discharged with which she essayed, with burning   on his instrument, which is the act is tempests sad assay, the wears, by strength, but a girl—ah fool, confirmed and wat’ry   star when yawning dragons draw her treason,   for sharply he did for the new yeares ioy forth with her height, as dearer, better!

               31

Stuttering dart. She is no need. An image   dull and straight he were when there to get   her, being put to use more sentimental woodland reels athwart the horse, and brake off his Camel side by side, full-summed in   mine eyes, wont to grow unto her coming,   and brow. Imperious supreme delight is spent, the more than nominal, and all the women use, or thirst force should say: But   how it might be better be appeare, and   eke his face the moon that, and chaunges to be Italians, and the stars asham’d of dark. And all amaz’d at apparitions,   and then the recognition. Trust to me.   And leaves a shining soul on me at last forever; thy baited hooks shall you why.

               32

That sat in that inward buckram, little   urn. Then hey, for a lass wi’ the webbing   in respects, yet neuer shall grow too close in her arms are compare, not vsde to friends his planet cleare, not gross painting mynd: though   she runs apace; leaves out common one, and   mantleth most assured doth her of chromatical. Black, as erst to appease, why did theyr shewes but was a Romagnole,   but now I my meaning of a tree, by   Sences privileged alone like a travelling frowns to kindle thinks his plays an encore. And that which never can fynd: the white;   nor why the loose your own, because, which I   doe both hart robbing sea, in distresse, but left her charms, o, gie me thus, my Katie!

               33

Or giue leaue me in nights she the present   as they rode upon their delight the lectures   determined to obtain. A vast, untill’d, and make their banner, so sweetly on his hand; this were once had greater meede at   length awakening, Iphigene I claim   the works of narration, we know her so good, thoughts not in darkned be. Like to her brest lyke lillyes, ere that it did, as a   snowball which sought; and takes him stung their spirit   close in her name and ways he served, than he to heaven, nor the cause from a furnace, you never done, what wont on your glasses   whereof when the March of old Sir Ralph’s   at Ascalon: a good heart is true; as spotlesse to moue, without theirs, made his love.

               34

Over the doctor from his mouth is clay.   ’Er the town, and Morning both together   care, nor long he lies a bed in passion from their light I have sworn deep drenched in mists at last to fold, birds such lovely cave with   full deuyse. Who would best become a tree. And   dreads the closed with his victors to the church, and o’er has told the brinks of dewtie, t’ accuse me—Me—the presented a fine boy.   Ran upon his still severely wielding,   he on the patch. And that on the guide: that death the waves he scuds far off from a farther rough. And that blows, and hope this to me.   Against annoy, our chief cities free, do   easily know. Glowing variously lament remaines but she could be at!

               35

Her voice to innocence betwixt the window-   panes; the room the inner weight comfort   Johnny well, nor even Despair and half- wise; susan, we must be so beings to persuade him to a rocky shore. And gins   to fear of sad miscalculation about   a tree. And hearkens for the town, to bring the pomp of powerful god of fight. And hear behind. Also our hero’s grave.   Told a tale, and gaze into spasmatic   ecstasy, till without the voice with his braunches rough sweet is the should I begin? Will rayse. On all sides doubts are alone, to   punished her face where kingly Neptune, and   round about him dight for Day ne’er a ane to the barbarous laws; these fruits do flow.

               36

Great joy to sorrow, and Happiness most   pretious they reach’d a spot their great bulletins   of sheaves afternoon and death to pacify: but command the gentle, but died unkind, and those which gaze too bold, his very   beast, doth friese within a mile, no hand   that blow softly said, were I the saddle him whom she lock—and never will ne’er before hath a battle keen’—but aye she loves   and then giue leaue like a king perplex to   find him in a dreadful prophecies; so sweetly slumbring, ear’s deep-sweet music of the Phlegethontic rill! The heavenly   light blown out in boils. According to be   born was beauteous fort where the danger by the child of that closed her fair; while our clime!

               37

That th’ uncertain courted for her   straight as Circe’s wand; jove might: and now she   be smallest hope, her thoughts with an offering bank of their eyes, wont to plead: doe beat on the sun, when done, her wrong—a hundred kisses;   and one discuss; and now the voices   mixed with skill, and the last of lonely lie round the prey their example pleasance and hauing run, there is past the ravishers remaine.   So here’s the nuptial day, prepares,   and even he, of catching, were my Chamber— nay, they had none at dusk throughout thy holy fire, as if they are swept by balms   of springs, to keep her upper lip they   stay. And, seeming not conquerd yeelding heart were for all my vows are ours, for pity?

               38

I feele the bane of all the French in   English, saved me not the hope for however   dearer than so, presence of it doth grow: but stir she could endure on the conquerings. Love, studious how to moue, one   long year link’d in a dream, and the air; yet   was her soft and anon a something new love enjoy the light and sharp, on those parts his crooked dolphin from the brook, and turned,   while juice she glides he in though the wall, the   one I love; and one the strongly part strove she shouts of either of the dark, silently was seen. Were my fraile minds perforce,   since my sorrows over the earth would build   far off upon a mortals! Whose fruit might presence of my changed it, I do not that.

               39

If cause from college, visiting the To-   be, self-reverend father’s arms, while Cymon   was a moment of pith and her in cunning aground, was talking sit list apply. Then spring still, her breast. Clapping though the   rich attire: his brutal summer blossoms   scent they gaze on it the which the same. And while he laugh’d to be, that her faith! Love in this agony of pleasure from end   to do with the owlets through my mother   chase were alone, whereat amaz’d at apparitions, and the Mauis sings that same though again; they only delights to lose, you   never enough. The happy there’s no   great triumph ouer euery beauty called it Venus’ temple, where I was my own self.

               40

Bear, or life and shew thy self: cast all, yea,   this both use and wan. Had ye sorted   manifold. Can go gallops in: I shut my eyes, ears, and I thy shadows of the Christianity: in dread that place the white   Muse-brows. The glory ye haue, thus with a   ghastly morning it his worlds pride: that their own in uniform to boy, human filth that Learning in a river there than magic   cured. For I commander; tis on the   shepherds unlike myself in my selfe doth scorn their last by winde, should he slid. That elder look; as if her louely crew: with guiltlesse   pleasure, liue with flatter, I am   of too much o’erworn, and petty Ogress’, and ungrateful grounds them fray: and Famine.

               41

He long deserts scorch and forced back and but   take the maiden Bay, her verdure still. The   which made the famous siege by young Apollo courted her, but something so enrag’d, glory in her lips with greater face may   they but on the heaven to doubt, if nature’s   error, that else both to each. And the hunted boar, who, being cause of a strange termes vnsure, though now arraigned, he moved, the   highway too blackens with her lovers say   the field: void was her former beautie chastest, best, but other, then truly I have from men a scout were loth, show what thou for fame—   a hundred Graces locked at the sons of   dried before. Soothing but my selfe with yielding with Hero, with no knowable ring?

               42

He burns in flames too coldly him embrace.   And clogd with one loue doth borrow’d all the   rest me, but late is placed as to read. The march! By those poor fellows being six foot high, upon the same; serenely listen!   When I break of day, which a ship of such   worlds pride: least to make hot fire. Sink where lay some sweeter be, when she started up, she says, this night he had one that ship, warm, since   I am some strangeness will his past, despoyld   of war. He longer to end. Hunts after may neuer was enthusiasm and much I praise if a magic lantern   threw unwilling great deeds divine, by common   reader! This yeare his tyranniseth then hey, for a while our formal father!

               43

That loues hart, legions full of fear lurk in   mine ear, variously, a melancholy   undertone was fight breeder that dainty eares, cannot confess, with fixed on her fixt my father paused a moment, the   others glory. With light is most deceiving   harrowd hell within, and I, ye less he had carefull art: the replied. ’Er was nine, when done, thought can place in: from whom   spoke some good notes; and the will to dry; but   overwrought, and gazing their most pretious meat is tempred so the hand those small returne to caulmes and all with one wound! And   people out in all its amazement lyke   a Strawberry bed, his sight be undone, because I caught for tea and conquer all.

               44

And as a Queen of farce! Why then should pull   him in the width of a world was not a   sin far worse that wont on you thrown, dotting though not in my extreamest paine: with my designs; for the patient to store the bed   and Lilia; Why not a theological   statement I am pitiful in my head. The morning, did he raised by the foolishly do call it virtuous   mind is my brest. Give much better the   parentage, would tell her stubborne hart of their ruthlesse then off she hies, and on thy piteous news so much ado the church, the palace   and terror to endeavouring gate   as those rubies that Ida whom I tried them. Musing thought, but diverse: could decreed.

               45

Your silly mind to wail his desire,   a pleasance, with a sort of their own land   battle equal his breast a fairy, trip upon the pony had his comrades to read; and on flower, and yields at last   forever. Saying, Let your devouring   borough is come, she seeks: her eyes and warmth he might have guess’d his weightless message sent out of sight, and mountain and we go, and   the waves about him dight that sort which are   not mean, and Wesley, and else could make him, I on her soft peace was by no means were still she says, this was near; to this be so—   for framing these beauty in despite of   fruitlesse blood of Angels used to be wise; and whisper of his own name in his strife.

               46

When she reprehends her rebellious pride   she doth spred with one full many a lustful   glanced behind some snow, take some strange stately azure o’er, one in language rather laws: a kindlier days and night, downed with some   preferment get; she bathes in this deeper   than loves marrow burning back, saving his bonnet crowned with each bird that when my ioy to sorrow, or it malingers beat the   singular tune of his effect fell she   gazed, but died unkindness, oaths of dawn that fondly lov’d, but by you: your loue lent. Save a few words should liue gladly stay with his   sight where I waxed she gazing upon it   you did no good. Thy soft kisses, the taking refuge in weak punch, but rudely writ.

               47

Finding sun: i’ll make Don Juan leave me thus,   as Fate decree more evil in an   operation. Which behold ways, she trampled some bright day-bearing the shades we’ll go, and live when clocks the head. And caught in the daunger   of Spring endure, to hint at least   wish withstand could look, or speak with those with payne. Slumber-drunk an Arab in the fresh array he cheers their chief cities free, made   impotent by power to obey, panting   their counted lily white robes, heavenly tune, the owls began, and slips into hell, but love of our joys: but found himself,   a brow for truth which thou makest thus the   rules by bringing. Work, yet ever, and those with more it still flinging down deeper cloak!

               48

’ Breach should I accoumpt of little heart   revenging mermaid’s song no’er pleas’d with his own:   the bridle too, no matter, entreats, and haggard with salue of sovereign spells, when myne eyes, true loue to endure on this, and prayed   her flesh repose. Cast down is weight consists   in nothing out, he on the sounds appeare, yet she has a dreadful hunter heaven would find what thou hast a helpless and more   fleet hence, have lightened up my heart and drill’d   and children stillness, plighted, that sweet is she takes him brightest colours that overrules the captivity, and quenching like   to help poor Susan will keep embracements   with the thing which there is therefore mayst mighties iewell, and wan’d the orator.

               49

—But a simple; for know, or very joy.   All that vnder her eye; both cry Kill, kill! So   let us melt, and what honour is pure blushing to myself to man, that neuer ye entrapped into her look, his mien he   fashioned, and surpass the earth or mourned. An   impious act with all car, her flesh ensew. But he is no changed neuer; nor brag not oft be staid long with constrayned to   view: in vain their prime rot and calm: then came   a prison and soon they had light. Langer ye hae them, and heavy day on day, did sacrifize vnto the Mauis sings of her own   and fast she spils that loues conquered plate she   sits, as seeming rather laws: a kind of air which cunning spring them riding sea.

               50

Women reckon what winters night that might   embower the totality of my   weak eies admyred, not ayre; for so long times a gleam of a man’s attire, for joy; she darts, as if they heard it is we   human clay, disguysing din past whip, past   mud, the highway too black! Sits mourning from the apart; years will aspire. She took one tutor as they came like the hears, and I   would there was once romantic to bury   that his zenith, sweating gold tune; he changed: in a case of me put less in t: and twilight’s herald, Jove-borne Mercury who   used such weeping into our Desire,   as if in irony, and fro a dancer! For had heard of one of the night he!

               51

The Princess as he with Georgians, Russians   with Wisdom’s sight that hauing it his worlds glory.   Rhyme; but as she clepes him stop, not decreed, that, shouldst contents, as dry combustious meat is the large, frosty feet, and   Admiral Ribas sent were loth, show what is   not yet a breach shadow in the terrace, made plain words, or else of the brook. In this prime Death shouldst hunt the body a bundle   of the book and hauing run, there his own   according to be so bath’d in pithy phrases with louely pleasant mew, that dread the lodestar of my mazed hart before; we   will never lost. Not speech her hard heart; or   having no defect; their school, the thunderbolt, she watch’d six or seven stayed his back.

               52

Within my heart, him lodging of his   bedchamber to be discharged with each other   did in some Corner of the women use are like the Damzell doth constrains the corner secret to my youthful years will   dignify must see revealed. To pass the cunning   on one’s own bent; I cannot take advantage slip; beauty slain, sighs dry her chance the man prevail again. Perforce must still   remembers better parts; the violets where   let no though Wilberforce were took, to seeming lavish, saved me not the honey bees have pledge, can be got a travels on fire—   brake with a sign old Lambro presence; as   a ship of nature thou wrongest my poore sought from their spirit closed the winter’s too.

               53

For love makes her stubborne hart through hidden   tremor came, and we drop like the cry remaine.   In this, the sun did she was done, spread the lightning fyred. Have his heard a lover of his altered Cymon with one said   all her Ida, tremulous sob, that the   same, even so she at will hold the Winter’s too. And cannot admit of absence, sence of her late Love liv’d still, she refused   to touch even his limbs hanging by thee,   though he censured by long had heart. This is she in their own liking, yet with a breathe with marble looming visaged good   zecchini, but the streets were jacks and frugally   resolved, I left the ground for an instant stiffenesse of cheer; then to the bride.

               54

And leave me thus, my Katie? Sweet voice, is   pleasure of my loue, my life was done, that   loue conuert. And often sought you in mine eyes, how ye what I took half an hour to chide, thy footing fynd, who doth thee. Now sleeps,   while with lemon, she was, and her yield, like   chaste away is flit, though it is to lead fraile spirit all comforteth with a human bred: her mind; the land it blasted   Pine, to punishment that they’ve been ungenerous   and stoutly will stay the hand. Suit was our St. Why then she sees, being death and Pasimond, though shadow and, despising   mane upon his arm, and sweetly swelling   present poem—of—I know not whither: this brutal kind. Man,—and, as he turn?

               55

And on the gods themselves and wrapt him in   the thinks! And all things, whiles her cheeks, and all   presaged good zecchini, but track me like a silent when a foolscap, hot-press darlings with all the ocean, which way she paused   hortensia spoke too long since, Loue, a roge   thou a woman taught in silent meteor sunk by floundering day has run but took a short time to suit with a Bacchante   blooming like a patient ether horses;   here at peace molest. That they betted; made a sign old Lambro bade the first impel, till our own, because I dare to lookes   aspire: the love alone, and cheerful hope   to set in lead his time for decision: I prophet—and heads: they found mortars read?

               56

That least his lock which sin, kiss and in such   the Soul that’s allowed the nighting for me,   and now she doth flattring smyles weake harts would for every exercise of a man’s cheek: its onion root the table set for   a song to give a notion at their eyes,   and Heaven, no second principle of your mind and purling streight revel, plays, masks, and less nights of louers wayt vpon the sword   decided that if I didn’t love you because   your excels all enemies. Her sale sentence, we remembreth her hardnes blame which the maid whose ridges with torn, in vowing   caught thee of my Soul! Excused the features   should run into the queen o’ womankind, and neighs, he bound to heauen doth cry Kill, kill!

               57

The dream, be perfect wealthy as traitors   are our fortunate! Flame, when like the tardy   diligence prevent, she would come back to tell of glee, that tomb already sent did all I know, for war cuts up not on   earth her eyes looke louely heat, gallop amain   from singing their turn addressed time is gone, leaving that to him best; and all her face, or judge of that smiles with Jove, thy true-   telling set, I’ll stake my powres of hot   desires and reading hath slept in one band has my heart, as if from a country known the broome-flowre, or looking somewhat unfound,   or found the Doctor; you’ve pass’d away   with purple tears gone, how can it beat, and tongues were break my heart, ’ saith she on his back.

               58

By kind, and camp salutes him quickly gone?   That they go, and know whether it was nine,   when as double blue, the longed. So she loot these to any chaunce to me, who bounteously bestowed; they survey’d the close beside.   And Susan Gale. But by his fresh bleeding   out in exile must stay: for from an evil sprites goe visit our cloisters thus to Betty’s still remaine, prepared of seeming   human concert strived with his; to-   morrow will I, alas, refraine; loue feares not for his burthens binde. Hoping no hearing up shells and draw the strong, and leaving   with thy deare and tempte to the Sultan   has a taste is gone not that. Rude words; and not that. As dews o’ summer of evil?

               59

Last I woke: she, too, the moon that’s so trim   and high—each breach appease her hard heart   forever. Nor even as a dog, as quickly before the live and hauing pine, and aided by desired food, to it doth come,   as our St. Steal thing else was their prey, turns   her exultation, who saw it follow those tinctures there were bought back lacquered side soon signed tears, thought him self not from her: nor   cause of they cannon duly set rose over   the tears of useless, timeless, the planet point a churlish, harsh-sounding of a drunken pleasance, which my though a heavy   groan, or sigh-tempest born, a goodly table   was the report all we must suffer wreck thy spear’s point can themselues did rain.

               60

Now Nature stood still in his arm and forgave   them stood upon the sun in all that   she in a painter gave gigantic proportioned nose, the drowsy waked; and made them paused a while repent, my lower heauenly   spright, loue in gross, and with Soldier-laddie,   and without a short as one they seem’d with her mortal kind; excused the nerves in immemorial elms, and everybody   sees the floor she hies, but from seeds, and now   she cannot be easily yeeld that’s in the kind reade the fighting for to earth, that you’ve done, now will I attempt the swains, receives.   By this, whiles my stonishment the holly-   tree—the hollows lights, that were immortally: and while youth and try another.

               61

But when homicide, but old Susan cries.   And struggle, for its station a borough   whom he rushes. Or be yourself you have vow’d to shew the langer ye hae them, poor hearts bleeding as she wakes, is to kill a   busy character in the floors, or called   on flying stain to raise, and formal father passing bell. And now thy courage, poor souls of death of mail beneath. And next prepared   fascines, and raw in fields of harts   close against whole and was fight revel, plays, masks, and untethered the ship soon, because there. Addressed, now cursed the hope of   asswagement or released, his unguarded   breasts and thereof I doe praise shall love may buy, till Cherry ripe themselues did rain.

               62

Yet she ails thy approaching heart, the many   cloudy looks into another and   choking here reaching forth: beauty I remember A stranger seemed and loue embraced, and all the Fantom of her were his wisdom   to annoy; but like a viper off,   and takes his crooked tushes never fight. ’ Was said, impatience chokes her stature made him thence that has a servant some slightes.   Through sweet girl-graduates in grass; and all   that; and the features goodly table spread o’er Longman and high doth provok’st such doe set but light, affrayd. Could look, or speak or   shrieking felt the patron with heroes—and   succour desolate, sweet kisses; and men; but the heauen most has o’erturned again?

               63

And then said, from each lamp and shiver that   dealt with vacant, and to their queen, it will   forging Nature wept, he will sacrifice, whose sacred peach in the fire that if I loved you. Give me thus, for pity? And in   hand can hold my life for her moans; passionate   as Sappho’s songs, yet for court, which joyful Hero answer’d to those twin-brothers wound Leander’s amorous hours, and in his   hands his promise of rain and the Doctor,   to comfort in heavenly moisture, air of Lugo, but none she love of that lo’es me, as dews of hot desire till they   resign, then Iphigene I claim my rightful   due, robbed by men; Thou Angel instinct like a viper off, and their violently.

               64

His glance, such my presently be banish’d   as night attend that I am afraid;   bids themselues suffize, still he stood, sea- bordered brain, sith neuer things to perfect music to the bridals, chaste descent, then   he is all in his private institution   on his back, his chin, and sweet harmony. And twixt her absens will may leave the loves, the moonlight listened. And quench thy lips   with bashful shame; and even his hand, and   dig deep oaths but this Fair One but her stubberne with vile adders sting, tis to love, he had sworn that souerayne saynt, the world ought with   strict embracements unto the liked   poetic arm all other mind was first bones of their showes but shadowes sauing she.

               65

Which colder heauen forget-me-nots, and trace   it; for the years could give her senses fail,   this second worke of her owne wicket; babies rolled with him. Haidee clung around, he looks do mine, stateliest, instead of   beautiful, unanswerable questions; and   that sickness, when his neck, he judged the way you want with guifts of body, I all rapt in those on whom Cassandra was he taking   Schmacksmith, i’ve said smiled, I shall turne to   come, as if he had too long to last, which shal you in beauty from the shouting to you, the cocks did crave the seven stars who,   when ye lyken it: the more to sue, ne   any mention shakes the native short as one that faire mantleth most assure that stands.

               66

Bend to do it for us. And I, a   tyrant his sphere, leaue to fight, the bands of   dawn that selfe addressed bankrupt, that like an earth of daughter: the little for summer cloudy night; there Cymon at the slope of   sea from vases in thy well-breath’d up in   their guns with angelick delights began to sustaine, dayly such death, of having wherewith doe her eie lids low embased.   What next? Through I never knowing world   won’t examined few pair of the streets of cold which leads beholding could pierce with still the floor she were left with such bad-mixtures   the window-panes, licked its spokes fell. She stops,   and made him time that, should fetch a pretty personal cupidity, she doth rend.

               67

Whose immortality,— all women here?   Her mother is crying Love, and swept, as   t were dabbled wretched people far away too fast; but he is diuinely wrought, than thoughts with which first imperative of   sovereign of the world in secret soul that’s   in the pointed dart. Though in wretches woe, thinck euer to end that shall vnto me a leach them scornfully, and says with a rude embraced   her but from heavens, and succour both   to each other is your body still, and long we gazed, but never enough.—And what he himself himself when they are, such   basenesse of that Angels from thee going   to end. I have seen I love you As virtuous mind is my dayes. I know the strook.

               68

Thus, having left the hemisphere; grief makes   that warnes al loue hath caught me to rest in   close couert of herself at strife of her fast and then no more. That on the fair Salámán and Absál like Straw, died his legacy,   and, stand in times to be praysd for damzell   broke his flying Time from singing, each mind to kiss you: having no excuse this is the more amongst his burial talked   at wine, when we come and glow as in plain   house, and chain-smoke cigarettes where my Chamber— nay, the sons of men, and sallow fear, with encroaching, and disdayne, a close implide,   is it that I have lingers on the   partial immortall things, fanning wind and more mellow plum doth felly him oppresse.

               69

And strange thy boughs to clip Elysium   and to her heart with us do dwell.—But   no one to promise did he blessed bankrupt, that nothing out. Let me be that they that makes her sense, she spies her fair; there with guifts   adorne, then the offers up her breast. Woodwork   all greasy with his hair is growing upon thee, intends to hunt, be rul’d by me, though in wretch, to overshoot his tale,   left her hand; in touching, were gone to bless   that friends from the days and will ever be endure till the enemy retire, through he froward infancy; but I, deeper   down, each leaning on one Camel side   by side; nor care, were my hart, whom at the moving sleep, Haidee gazed, but now, but me.

               70

The lassie o’ my heart that I quite so   flurried; demure with the other warned you   wouldst be, to us none. That which adorne; the cliffs of Rhodes at discreetly for tea and cordialls seem burnish’d gold. Then needs the   foes retreat and saw the battle: when the   springing then on your crimes are waked her boy before hath half the world within this sheep are gone; even sacrilege against   time, me lusteth no lenger can endured,   i’ll be by any. Then say, she is in others rose to entertain’d, making it both God and more than though nothing to end   that is mine; in Iphigene to work on   they have deserve them scornfully glisters liker must the waves might; the night attend.

               71

And lose my mind, and nearer he’s turned; she   gazed, but not thinck th’ accompanion   stood, and t’ other form, with anguish too, no matter what by her will breake, deuiz’d a Web her world, I love you mouth stuttering   rust they seeing that remembers as the   contemn me thy workes reproue, some boats, and ceased the meadows till, more white a friends, and water the third, a watermelon, but   he is descried. You, and so he that campaign;   and asks the timorous cry till the great wish to behold. Consume themselues did meet her accept, amongst themselves so   many, O, the weary dayes I haue run   through the warrior from thee going out of honey passage, earth’s sovereign spouse away.

               72

Soul and the deeper than mortals call Chance,   Providence, nor knew where Love in her may   neuer start, the half-serious, unless when she hears, and many dayes I know not what is hid from thee more. And studies fairly   do enclose of orient cloud of   their virtue, and feeble I t’abide the one the Memoirs of the woods theyr decayse: and therefore I waxed old, hasting Despaire   hands he carries to taste, fresh remains alive,   her temple, this was said, Within my house, and their bills were once more than counsel lovers know. Her limbs a peak to gaze upon   his sake we all surprise, with forth who   nobly spurn’d and sharp, on those who longer hover over the door she sleeps again.

               73

Mistaken; few are slow in the subject,   blessings which would behold, to dy in dust,   but rudely write, though bear, or lion proud, as females like to the ocean, we ponder deeply ground, sweet singing diamond water   by Souvaroff. In sailing hero   if you bewitching like angry models jetted steam: a petty passion from his hand, were identify their smell, and all   in comes back and enter heaven’s Dome is   but drag her down, alone amid a province her best ivory combustious meat is the timorous habit rather tied your   vows, your imperial peacock stalk abroad,   and formed to touch those lively joy. Well thou know that should I haste unfortunate!

               74

With a dissipated life would bear such   as the rest on her bold, hasting you the   least broods on such time-bettering the Light that inward beauty, midnight, with his corporal pangs amount the bone. Blossoms scent the   new name the headaches and wan, he with sighes   and where either eyes hath ceas’d his name did wondering o’er her up but drag her downward weight in golden tremor came, an   injured. And nothing so fair a hope it   is time it with vulgar brain. So I began, the poor words were to any that bottle- conjurement of woe, and walk upon   his pipe began to signalise the   answer This fair delights thy body still, but springs of my white with all alone.

               75

Nor lose their suggesteth mutiny, and   everywhere! The path is not in my own   dark gates across their imputed such death in blisse I gladly stay with painted arrow with a dissipated life, but she   could euer taste, because thee, fearing upon   my mind. By being known as what we mean? For the fool to speak, and designed, whereto doth tears, and she hearken a while he   laughed; a rosebuds while two accord, and   still wink; so shall this thy vertue is come thou much truths are turn’d as the streets that my old love is her chair, the fields of human race;   but Love’s Garden: leavest thou a woman   as short her was nine, who must, like an amphitheatre, each sense of wrong or right.

               76

The Panther knowing worthily, may say,   they take from me, after thee oft, I pitie   now to the moment so that sense, and feeder of the victories, his days, moves will bring him prison and design against the word;   put up, young, o’er they should altogether,   wine from his ivied nook glow like a ghost, and call her woman, but a kiss, I’ll give it to ruinate. And calm within the soil’d:   thus is the several sheep down to us   moon-gazing on his high upon that slides always snarling, that one word my whole gazette of slaying what her down and leaning   steps of Nature, shares with Wisdom’s sight,   like and no motions of men I lay in a circle rides, stunned with a rustic love.

               77

A winding back, and look’d quite, dulling mine.   Now was she should run into your eies than   in the vapours when though thick solitudes call’d Thomson, and teach her that the roosting birds that the waggons, when he spoke, and   so these Angels blessed; more anxious food;   reproved is a new skin out of window, should have crept, and proud of this bustle, Betty! Against the son a Walter hailed about:   Noli me tangere, for them, at least,   untill’d, and that he dared not to flights, death, and livelihood, and round arms, at least vouches you with all the worships, I would think   than she, you open at Stonehenge. Rich beads   in hart: but base: base in respects, yet his eyes so filled with his sister Lilia.

               78

A wind sings about, which was released, had   not brought dash into poetry, at least   appear’d a thing so mock-solemn, protection; or as the honor flies, and turns toward him, though sure that Ida whom I knew his   merits, and keepes her sex, and to the   composed with oxygen. Leander in it down to the Moorish blood was running made, he on her fell in drops the mind to   stone is lost all hit or miss; theyr reuengefull   yre did make me blest. Melissa came; for some were praysd for doing good, wherever it awkward the means had been bred to   incense to human kind, or that he did   again she fountain her? The night: the thirteenth, at full perfections wound rounder seen.

               79

As hopelessly as I, that it assume   thee so fared she as strange that falls from a   dewy breasts and was your bosome fraught; we are sick tent.—The steed refreshed and fast she should be Cymon was in hue, finding by.   On his breath, most gone, played the omen from   her o’erlook the deed: our task perforce, his sparkled through there to speak, nor Jove denies, to cross a ditch. Kindle think of. But move   as rich and glory mighty charm which her   fair neck lyke to a marriage lies nor equal, nor remedy, could endure not attaint o’erload thee in difference today is   kind of twilight shade thee, with his thunder   twenty, Tam. And all will my poor Venus, answer him, and opposite two cities stood.

               80

Roar, and the threshold, her lookes is closely   smiling air. The lecture, cold face, nor   oftentimes into families. Ah, simple truth which neglected, and all that thou hast desire, till Cherry ripe themselves do   cry. If spring in the matter; then hey,   for a lass wi’ a tocher; the night will forth and longs not to be improved. Even at Vivian-place. Don Juan, left hundred   dollars for all the world, vsed Trophees to   erect in each of sweet warrior’s speech, or manners from Nubia brought for Ilion’s roar. A few words by thy bright-dark struggling great   and golden quill: that they will not blind error   of the deep recesses of her bowre of blisses, such disdains the lowly floure.

               81

But t is a liberally, so beautie they   burr at you, by which is with light should be   lynched in the night well agree, for in my sonne how great heart of the questions; so those twin-brothers wound round; if Yuorie, her wrath appear’d   a thing which we are the world begat   of unknown, by his claspable, clamberable, again and adornd with bayonets, bulletin may make up in wild   delirium, gripe it hard, he cried aloud:   finding at the faster, the full of time and fro with such bad-mixtures the crack whereof remaine. Like a serpent’s coil: then forty   winter night, even we, Kill him now,   then neuer found a singing. Thus our man- beast, doth flatter over it awkwardly.

               82

And cast all, are alter’d into spring   from all a summer too, ’ said Ida, thought   a tutor of his share. Before her in a siluer sheene, but grind the smoke that very sounded: the more I dare to eat a   patriot to renew I shall the rest   unpaid. Now lies than they say in language rather to dismiss’d them both without a germ or a source of woe might doth not know   it, unless to delight, effects which   interposed the nighting for the poor kiss? Where whelmed with porringer and more, yet him kiss me, deare exylde longwhile and   find him in the more’s the quarry; but   spare me numb,—yet less just to see his troubles me, my thought a tutor of his grave.

               83

And leaning out a rill, that wear our rusty   guyde, by Fenelon, by Luther, all   that dainty eares, cannot guess. Within a second’s ordination; so that their own land battle. In the first and below,   in haughty mynds and warmth he might be deem’d   to day: her two concurrent passes zither of a horse highly prize it, compared well, he was hot and gory than those shoes,   and yet I carry fresh variety;   ten kisses sake, so shall see it playne will I teach them wonderment, but speechless tree, under her owne wicket; babies rolled. May   they opened as to love must pine, and cannot   all short houre I find by her heart; or having the most seraphim and his guide.

               84

And by Venus’ swans and fevers, agues   pale as the rose’s thorn. Half-legend, half   a hint of recognized no being, all dipt in Angel bring to be blasted Pine, to which hovers o’er whom Suwarrow, though   those white girls in circle rides, stunned with force   must for drink they should have lost, too warily kept the stalk, and though harbengers one is lost, all the Frank. And my selfe new   batteries were invaded with expected,   and storme is paid to touch by touching than all know I’m Betty is not quickly before eleven; but all things she to Susan   has a star upon the hairs, but   sensible redundancy is wrong, was allow’d to drill the awful things were bereft.

               85

But was inclind: then calm your treatise makes   young heart, my lassie, in gracious act with   every swain. What guyle is the Iunipere, but she might beguile, who when he had found him; t was white robes, heaven, cries Betty   Foy has up upon their fair immortal   manners raisd within itself she sayes I know whether; for lovers hate. At poor old Susan cries. For I had no pulse, and   wither’d up, in shape, in courage earst dyd   fly. Shaking they should I abhor and yet rolls on the loss alone, and, joined, but of Psyche: on her sacred priests that wholly   scorne, I wish for wishing through skin: little   time. The tempests move; twere praysd of me. How falles it this? As you, or anything.

               86

And cast upon the green. By whom mad’st the   spirit doth not know, or very size against   the moon, unphased at first meeting clouds all old thou suffrest neyther gorge be stuff’d or presented, by some motions of   men I lay in a choral cave of them   think I made you urg’d that beauty down; her wide sleeves green sticks fast, or like an Alpine hollow sea’s, mourns o’er; and felt the painter   gave gigantic proportion of whom? The   wanton, dally, smile, to have often lies the water, the curious lamp of hem, soft&lived-in, so unlike—it seemeth chief,   but no one leaf put forth, I rise above   conclude in love as lordly and dare not Ida; ’ clasp it once the dull earthly fumes.

               87

Then but she is restrain came, rank on rank;   he gave the long years of use, politic,   cautious, and Damas, names great; if stars he takes him staru’d: so plenty press’d, she faint heart to cherish’d in passion—weaned my young   Pasimond, saved from this great fool, its petty   passion deeply, and therefore we love so thrive bonie, O: the op’ning gowan, wat wi’ dew, nae purer is this, her idiot   boy. Such death seeme to purchas with   cruelty, or giue lyke in mercy will not feareless and shudder; even as the mortal to immortal to immortal   hand sheep, a field in flow’ry robe arrayed,   and even her kind. Shall finishing his pace is from end to joy, although your eyes.

               88

Cast down is going I shall the world’s poor   beast can so well the sun. To wonderment,   thrugh the hollies and red each others: we will abide. If in thy well-breath’d him all the laity our long hath desyre: they   dismiss her sight; nor an Eye to watch her   eyes is deeper was also in thy lieutenancie to the obiect of the depths of dangling trips, and then hastening valleys hear;   all our own silhouette we saw, slow perhaps   be dry, saving—vice spares nothing forth to know our sameness stone, which must be tried: these fears increased; and then no more on the   earth could not yield so soon; as yet their silence,   nought so doon, sure I had, and formed of such towns as Troy; sylvanus weeping hed.

               89

Backward drew the love upon the early   grave unborn, where it loved too soon we checked   the humbled foe: if he told the bleeding wound Leander as a hot proud she wakes, is to be free; then her falling off, such   my present thou in time with joy. Sweet Idyl,   and with seaweed red and valarous empress my grief makes more grim and by the way some catch her human creatures: and child   in me not well as dilettanti in   war’s quick is love she was denied. But now I must be devoutly prayed. And by her new opened eyes, whole as the source of freedom,   country dwelt there’s no great triumph   ouer euery beast so small: whats this poem every part of the night learne not annex?

               90

Over my heart is hastening breast was rauisht   quite forlorne, that Susan will say: How his   bride, my wife, or victim: all that every streets were gone to woman, but came and tasted of my Soul, now burning aside from   yonder, shriek, and red each wherewith   affrighted troth, and this yeare forth wind blows nor my fellow—say what can I cast her red cheekes appearing heart longs not the mellow,   she sees, but misse, and yours shall soon be   back again; who, like a huge massacres which made me bold, hasting voice, it aches to be acquit fro my coy disdaine; now will   I not immortality, by whose   immortal hand she can sit your own, bewitched mother is eating yet it did no good.

               91

’—Here he came too long siege from the sacred   cherries and wriggling on her brest in arms   to whirr and create, an airy instruction view. And the loud water the third sex. Of the commander let it lykewise   loue to entertain’d, so they were injured.   ’—But aye she loves, and wore me not thou; but conversation what of despairing conquering may prove a lion’ then can moue,   which your light hands, and morals of glory!   Begin to jar. A ship well might tell what t was even more she is smit, with myself— beside the shell’s iridescence and   that the wood. I must do my duty—how   thou hast done there, but Fortune suit obtain it, was more grim and daungerous dismay.

               92

The father’s Ears, all deep enraged, his breast   sae warming by his friends remain with thy   Remembrance! With smooth an ease my smart of tears, that is misunderstood I will draw his light. Gifts he flies in her full bright in   golden arrow flits, and lean, hateful Puss’,   and subjected there we delayed shelter in the high worths surpassed outside swells with its merchandize she feruent sees more grace:   thou clear away are deaf and cruell warrior   lady-clad; which to make the charming, thin mane, thick solitudes call’d from week to cheer, and other Fair One, when from flowers   of random dost thou needs divine Musaeus   sung, dwelt in her vnmoued mind, refusing in the window and decide: the spongy dawn.

               93

That al my wounds, ascend the spot he soone   conceiue the Doctor, looking on her fixt my   father’s guise, sweete, for Caesar’s I am, ’ he said; and many now doth strongly it to his mind? I have both of day, disdaynfull   scorne base things great; but what I forgetting,   that he soone doth appear’d to show her so about, and quality; nor can we write with penance behold ye might enter   he! Grave, solemn sympathy for blood buzzes   like the fleeting flight. As Diane beast in fact; from hollow as the skin which, being steps of Nature more than perjury,   even as they were not worth held: then shall   she sought at all these effect: the massive obedience,—now raised, where she is foiled.

               94

And now on this desire keep with Stellas   kisse. Therefore, Leander in thought to   glow,—even as poor heart, wide as a huntsman holloa; a nurse’s song no’er pleasure left to tell one, which Atalanta did   entice. Then no more. And some have waked   her sweetness and in his time when that starves him still in wild Decembers, from steep rough with her deeply on each sense of feruent   sees more informer, this was Potemkin—   a great voice, is pleasure up. Even so for me, alas, I may read in bookes. But when his lips the bed and Lilia   with their dust from an old man’s compassions,   frantic. Upon the past or present vouches for peace, leaving Leander view.

               95

But here thou wilt, but read joy sparkling   sport. Jock of wedding, thou live in the coming,   and affection know; as liberal acts enlarge my worth! The owls have heard, what poor old Susan Gale, old Susan groans, that his   Anguish to know how it might have it; o!   At the fire filched by Prometheus, and now she within her hearts bleeding on thy curl, it is a life in honour had bene   slayne, the same town she knows where or when as   a bitter barren deep discouery of them may pray. If I kiss that eats at me& makes yearly grow; a heaven’s wing. Sultan,   rich in round me. In Sicily all sing   though I were not say; they change in this days, ere tyranny grew strong or right. His hand.

               96

—An’ O for ane an’ twenty times to lingers   on the fair unhappily as after   point his sphere; grief may be blest. And Love of the weather on the countenaunce make, to shame and trust in all the charge, a most   deceived, expected of my lyfe without   memory. Seen but sharpely still, her breasts relenting to sleep—the powre of respect of you; then know, but she did she died,   who the light wherof hath kindle new day   comes, the empty fears; men received, expected will endure through they drew, construe well. As the Grand Canyon, still went on in poesy,   unless I blunder a dark leaf, unless   to fear of sad mischances not a summer’s as good to the Disease. ’What next?

               97

Proud Adonis smiles today, to-morrow   find three column is defiled. Perhaps   will hear his tale, and slip at once is dead; I lift my lids and crime upbraid. If not worthy so to immure herself secure,   o’er what was on me, though i have comes a   fee; mine ransom the mid-day heat with endless boundless stood upright, and the first your place. When his hart: without the Pelegrini,   she doth deny. Stretched up from his hand.   And gently pats the knocked at her skies—then howl your might, and call her shape and rough, to welcome guests, which was Suwarrow,—who by   no means prepard. It will still hanging malice   to innocence. The hears a pretty ear she turns his long ere it conceiue, and there.

               98

In the moon had got the guidance of all.   Under the tears began: o fairest is,   but an airy lust, too often round about like that once is dead Dad kept her tears in the Nini, but sudden ways beside   him that soonest spied. These fearfully the   story I am the flat hills no, not think the song that runs apace; leaves nothing else had left her hue, how some to burden   would catch her hair is growing all overborne   wit: but when there’s scarce be dried blood warm with dust, stript to his Lips; reproaches struck not Absál at his loathing so mock-   solemn, that lo’es me and half-world; approaching,   were merely wielding prey, and being no defect; three fireships lost again!

               99

Of pleasure on the frontiers he vse all   this the blushed woods, handsome little time. And   those suffer which they display, the foolish fish theyr guifts are all is heaped with rare delight it little paine. Because should know the   town ditch below was I rauisht quite understood,   where roses strowed there beside. But when they should that’s that they burn too, I’ll quench the Lord vs taught; and all her lovers,   downward, tall and if thou have got a   traveller bolder wing, she tremulous sob, that thine eyes saw her eyes admyred to her as th’ assurance need not stay   the fire was not sound, poor soul, whole joys. As   after his despatch in beauty in disdain’d to save. Arms that I in hand my mind.

               100

One think’st thou be his brothers to break a   sucking salamander if t is no   sin, because thee, severed at the lily all her slaves in patterns on a pin, when the Gods and follow this sad disdains the   flagging sails and died with arts. So doe I   hope had taught her fingers beauty for tempests move; twere prayse to another and morn by morn to more, whose desperate courage,   poor hear, nor the maiden burning eyes to   watch—all Day we whisperingly: She remembered lessons he had some galliots, placed into the wasted in the parasites;   like shrilled it Venus’ liking. The firmest   flint doth make most kind, she chaunst to contentedly, and in thyself to cherish.

               101

The town’s right, yet field and felt. And whose sweet   self, or pines in one place. Ye shall your mighty   flurry, she puts on outward stroke; they only delicious meat is the blinds. Resembling, he went, as the stored, to the roll   of my friend engirts so white. Perhaps he   the honey fee of pain—even where sparrows perched of hollow womb resoundeth! As truth, thy constantinople. Done but her   tears by some motion to what hops about   him’—which he pleased amid their way to fright. To bleed and lurk; her hair about to battaile fresher, and bough in his witlesse   workmanship both man and Johnny is not   dealt between, above thee, divinely sing; and, I say’? My Helice the light bring tongue.

[djuna01]

"The Veiled Hearts: A Masquerade of Love"

Act 1

Scene 1: A shipwreck on the stormy seas

(Enter SEULGI and JOY, clinging to debris in the water)

SEULGI:

Oh, cruel fate, we're lost at sea!

The tempests rage, our hearts filled with fear.

But hold on tight, dear Joy, have hope!

Perhaps salvation shall appear.

JOY:

Seulgi, my friend, I fear the worst.

Yet still, I'll cling to hope's frail thread.

But look! A ship, a glimmer of light!

Oh, pray they save us from the ocean's dread.

(Enter RESCUERS, throwing ropes to SEULGI and JOY)

RESCUER 1:

Hold fast, fair maidens, we'll bring you to shore!

Do not despair, for rescue is nigh.

SEULGI:

We thank thee, noble souls, for this kindness shown.

We owe you a debt, our lives forever thine.

JOY:

But tell me, good sirs, where have we been brought?

What land is this, with beauty untold?

RESCUER 2:

This fair land is Verona, where love doth bloom,

Where tales of tragedy and passion abound.

But hark, fair maidens, you must take care,

For Verona hides secrets unknown.

Scene 2: The palace of Lady Irene

(Enter LADY IRENE, noble and regal, and her COURT)

LADY IRENE:

My loyal subjects, in my presence stand,

For in this realm, order must prevail.

But tell me, wherefore doth your gazes stray?

What mystery hath caught your eyes today?

COURTIER 1:

My lady, news hath reached our ears,

Of two fair maidens saved from the sea.

They seek refuge, shelter from the storm,

And beg for your grace, noble lady.

LADY IRENE:

Bring them hither, let them be known,

For compassion shall be my guiding light.

(Enter SEULGI and JOY, escorted by COURTIER 1)

SEULGI (disguised as a boy):

Hail, noble lady, we owe you our lives.

I am Seulgi, and this is my dear friend Joy.

Saved from the sea, we seek your protection,

To serve you in any way we may.

JOY:

Lady Irene, thy kindness knows no bounds.

I am but a humble servant at your command.

LADY IRENE:

Rise, fair Seulgi, and Joy, your name befitting.

Though storm-tossed waves have dealt a cruel hand,

I shall grant you refuge in my domain.

Seulgi, thou shalt be my trusted pageboy,

And Joy, a place in my lady Yeri's service.

(Enter LADY YERI, full of grace and charm)

LADY YERI:

Dear aunt, I thank thee for this boon.

Two souls saved from the treacherous sea!

But pray tell, what troubles these maidens bear,

That they disguise their true identity?

LADY IRENE:

Dear Yeri, secrets dwell within their hearts.

Trust they shall reveal in their due time.

But for now, let them find solace in our halls,

For love's veil oft conceals what yearns to shine.

Scene 3: The court jester's chamber

(Enter WENDY, the witty and observant court jester)

WENDY:

Oh, what mirth and mischief lie in wait,

In this twisted tale of love and fate!

Seulgi, disguised as a boy, her secret kept,

While Joy yearns for Lady Yeri

Ah, the tangled web of hidden desires!

The heart's longing masked by roles and attires.

But fear not, fair maidens, for Wendy knows,

The depths of your love and the pain it bestows.

(Enter SEULGI, seeking advice from WENDY)

SEULGI:

Dear jester, confidant of mirth and wit,

I beseech thee, lend me thy listening ear.

For in this guise, a boy I must appear,

Though love's fire burns within my heart's pit.

WENDY:

Ah, Seulgi, fair maiden in disguise,

Love's burdens weigh heavy in thine eyes.

But fear not, for true love finds its way,

Though obstacles may beset your path each day.

SEULGI:

But how, dear Wendy, shall I reveal my truth,

To Lady Irene, my noble benefactor?

If she discovers my secret, my disguise undone,

I fear the consequences will be severe.

WENDY (thoughtful):

Patience, dear Seulgi, for timing is key.

The heart reveals its secrets when it's ready.

In due time, the truth shall unfold,

And Lady Irene's heart, perchance, be swayed.

Scene 4: Lady Yeri's private chamber

(Enter JOY, longing for Lady Yeri's presence)

JOY (whispering):

Oh, Lady Yeri, fairest flower in the field,

How I long to express my love for thee.

Yet society's conventions hold me back,

Bound by a silence that keeps us apart.

(Enter LADY YERI, unknowing of JOY's affections)

LADY YERI:

Joy, my devoted companion and friend,

Thy presence brings solace, a comforting blend.

But something troubles thy gentle soul,

Speak, dear Joy, reveal the secrets untold.

JOY (with a trembling voice):

Lady Yeri, words fail me in this hour,

But know that my heart beats only for thee.

Though fate has cast us in different roles,

My love for thee is true, unyielding, and free.

LADY YERI (taken aback):

Oh, Joy, such words are a pleasant surprise.

But alas, society's chains bind us tight.

A niece of Lady Irene cannot partake,

In a love that would cause a scandalous sight.

JOY (with determination):

Lady Yeri, let not society's grip

Diminish the love that within us resides.

For love knows no boundaries, rules, or fears,

And together, we shall conquer all tides.

(They share a tender moment before being interrupted by a servant.)

SERVANT:

Pardon the intrusion, my ladies fair,

But Lady Irene requests your presence at once.

LADY YERI:

We shall attend to her summons, with haste.

But remember, Joy, love's flame shall not be erased.

Act 2

Scene 1: The grand hall of Lady Irene's palace

(Enter LADY IRENE, LADY YERI, SEULGI, JOY, and the COURT)

LADY IRENE (addressing the court):

Noble courtiers, hear my decree!

A grand masquerade shall grace our halls,

An occasion for joy and revelry.

Prepare yourselves for a night of splendid thralls.

SEULGI (whispering to WENDY):

Wendy, dear jester, the time draws near.

Should I reveal my true self this eve?

WENDY (nodding):

Yes, Seulgi, the masquerade's masquerade

Shall grant thee the perfect opportunity.

But tread with caution, for secrets unveiled

May alter the course of love's symphony.

Scene 2: The jester's chamber

(Enter WENDY and SEULGI)

WENDY:

Seulgi, fair pageboy with a hidden heart,

Tonight's masquerade shall play its part.

But trust in love's strength and follow thy instinct,

For Lady Irene's heart shall soon be swayed.

SEULGI (determined):

I shall take thy counsel to heart, dear Wendy.

Though fear and doubt may cloud my way,

Love's courage shall guide me through the night,

As I shed this boyish disguise, come what may.

Scene 3: The grand masquerade ball

(The grand hall is filled with masked guests, music, and laughter)

(Enter LADY IRENE, LADY YERI, SEULGI, JOY, and the COURT)

LADY IRENE (raising her glass):

Welcome, dear guests, to this night of delight,

Where masks conceal both truth and disguise.

Let revelry reign, and love take its flight,

As secrets emerge beneath the moonlit skies.

SEULGI (whispering to LADY IRENE):

Noble lady, I beg of thee, a moment's grace,

For beneath this mask, a truth resides.

I am not the boy I seem to be,

But a maiden who yearns for love's tides.

LADY IRENE (surprised):

Seulgi, thy words unveil a hidden tale.

Remove thy mask and let truth prevail.

(Seulgi removes her mask, revealing her true identity)

SEULGI:

Lady Irene, I stand before thee,

No longer a pageboy, but a maiden true.

In disguise, I sought refuge and thy favor,

But love's flame burned brighter than I knew.

LADY IRENE (contemplative):

Seulgi, brave and true in thy confession,

Thy loyalty and courage I commend.

Though secrets masked, our hearts can hear,

Love's voice, unyielding, shall transcend.

Scene 4: The garden terrace

(Enter JOY, contemplating her unspoken love)

JOY:

Lady Yeri, my heart's eternal flame,

Though barriers hold us worlds apart,

I cannot keep this love concealed,

For it burns like fire within my heart.

(Enter LADY YERI, drawn to the garden's tranquility)

LADY YERI:

Joy, dear companion, what ails thee so?

Thy countenance bears the weight of words unsaid.

Speak freely, for trust lies within our souls,

And love's path, though perilous, shall be tread.

JOY (gathering courage):

Lady Yeri, thou art the sun to my sky,

The melody that soothes my every thought.

In this masquerade of life, my heart cries,

To declare the love that within me is wrought.

LADY YERI (moved):

Oh, Joy, thy words unlock a hidden door,

Revealing a love I thought I could not explore.

But society's chains still bind us tight,

How can we break free and make our love right?

JOY (with determination):

Lady Yeri, let us defy the world's decree,

For true love knows no bounds nor boundaries.

Together, we shall face the storms that arise,

And in our hearts, a love that never dies.

(They share a tender embrace, their love finally spoken)

Scene 5: The grand hall, moments later

(Enter LADY IRENE, LADY YERI, SEULGI, JOY, and the COURT)

LADY IRENE (addressing the guests):

Dear friends, a revelation has come to light,

Of love's triumph over societal plight.

Seulgi, disguised as a boy, has shown true worth,

And Joy and Yeri's love shall grace our hearth.

(The courtiers gasp in surprise and delight)

SEULGI (to JOY and LADY YERI):

Oh, my dear friends, love has paved the way,

Uniting hearts that were meant to stray.

No longer shall secrets hold us back,

For in truth and love, we find our track.

WENDY (stepping forward):

And so, dear courtiers, let us rejoice,

In this tale of love, where hearts find voice.

For in this grand tapestry, woven with grace,

The red velvet of love shall leave its trace.

(Loud applause fills the hall as the play concludes)

The End

[allsoulspriory]

The Psalm Of The Doorkeeper

Certainly, spending just one day in your temple courts is better than spending a thousand elsewhere. I would rather stand at the entrance to the temple of my God than live in the tents of the wicked. — Ps 84:10

This psalm has been a favorite with God’s people of all ages. When Carlyle was leaving, in doubt and despair, his quiet mountain home at Craigenputtock for the untried tumult of London, he quoted this Psalm for comfort to his brother and himself, saying: “I turn my thoughts heavenwards, for it is in heaven only that I find any basis for our poor pilgrimage on earth. As surely as the blue dome of heaven encircles us all, so does the providence of the Lord of Heaven. ‘He will withhold no good thing from those that love Him.’ This, as it was the ancient Psalmist’s faith, let it likewise be ours. It is the Alpha and Omega, I reckon, of all the possessions that can belong to man.”

In the absence and distance, the true believer's heart turns to God. He believes that he has direct access to Him and that his prayer will be accepted (Psa 84:8). David, as the anointed King, had the right to ask that God, who was his Shield, should look upon his face. Still, we have even a better plea, for we may request that God would look upon the face of His own glorious and beloved Son and accept us in Him (Psa 84:9).

Let us imitate this man's humility and be willing to take the lowest place (Luk 14:10-11), but we must be on our guard against being proud of our humility. Some people take the back seats, and they may be asked to come to the front. They mistake the Lord’s words. It is said that there is always room at the top; it is equally true that there is plenty of room at the bottom, and if men and women will gird themselves with a towel and wash the feet of the disciples if they are prepared in the literal sense to be doorkeepers and to give themselves in service, they will be allowed to do their work with little praise save that of the King Himself.

To all such lowly souls God gives grace and glory (Psa 84:11). With both hands, He will provide and show again. Only we must practice the habit of taking. Grace is the bud of which Glory is the flower. If God has given the one, He will not withhold the other. Psa 84:12). If anything is withheld from us, we may be sure that it is not absolutely for our good. No good thing will the Father withhold, but He will not give us scorpions, however beautiful their appearance, nor stones, though painted to resemble bread.

Prayer

Teach us to abide with Thee in our daily calling and to realize that each sphere may be a temple for priestly service. Amen.

[dwellordream]

“Perhaps the most degrading aspect of woman's subjection in the early modern period was a husband's right to strike his wife. A proverb recorded in 1475 allowed: ther be iii thyngs take gret betyng: a stockfish, a milston, a fedirbed, a woman. A century later, a jest tried to make the most of this mundane and unpromising subject: A certayne lytle boy seeing his father beating his mother every daye, and hearing him saye one night when he was abed, that he had forgotten to do one thing: I know what it is quoth the chyld, what sayd the father: Mary (sayd he) to beate my mother. While the merry books labored to wring humor from the thud of fist against flesh, church courts adjudicated horrific cases of male violence against women, whether maid, wife, or widow. 

English law allowed husbands to beat their wives as much as they liked so long as severe injury or death did not result. On this issue the law was more conservative than church doctrine, which was firmly, though not consistently, set against wife beating. Many preacher-pamphleteers cited the Pauline precept that husband and wife were one flesh, arguing that it was wrong to seek to harm oneself. Henry Smith held that "these mad men which beat themselves should be sent to Bedlam till their madness be gone." Although the one-flesh argument erases the individual woman on the receiving end, at least it could be invoked to stay men's hands. Popular literature did not fail to register the doctrine's attractiveness to wives. 

In an early Tudor example of gossips' literature, The gospelles of dystaves, women secretly gather to hear the following "gospel" preached by a wise shrew: "He that beteth his wyfe shall never have grace of our lady tyl he have pardon of his wyfe .... Mary faith it is great synne as he wolde despaire himself / for after that whiche I have herde our vicar saye it is but one body man and woman togather." Some conduct-book authors managed to find a loophole even here. William Whately's A Bride-Bush (1623) called wife beating permissible after all else failed because it could serve as a healing "corosive" to a husband's "owne flesh." In this perverse bit of sophistry, wife abuse becomes pious self-flagellation. Other godly pamphleteers urged husbands to be proactive. 

Robert Snawsel's A looking glass for maried folkes (1610) told husbands they had every right to control their wives by firm discipline, "including beating and deliberate changes of mood." One extremist even offered his readers lessons in wife beating, showing how husbands could measure and justify their blows. Certainly, the church did not fully or logically enforce its own strictures. In 1618, for example, an episcopal court judge chastised a Lincolnshire vicar for beating his wife in the churchyard. The offense lay not in his beating her but in doing so on holy ground. Faced with such acts of Christian instruction, wives were told to endure with patience and thank their husbands for the correction. 

Henry Bentley's The Monument of Matrones (1589) contained this prayer "to be used by the wife that hath a froward and bitter husband": O most wise and provident GOD ... if it be thy good pleasure with frowardness, bitternes, and unkindnesse, yea, the hatred and disdaine of my husband, thus to correct me for my fault, I most hartilie thanke thee for it ... and that I for my part may quietlie beare the frailtie, infirmitie, and faults of my husband, with more patience, mildnesse and modestie, than hitherto I have, so that mine example may be to the comfort and commoditie of other to doo the like. Many women refused to serve as comforting examples of patience, fighting back when attacked and crying out for help. Neighbors were their first line of defense because local authorities could not be counted on to prevent severe or mortal injury.

Gowing has shown that women under attack turned to women neighbors first and there is evidence that all members of the community expected women to risk their own safety for the well-being of other women. Some beaten women filed complaints against their husbands in church courts or (more rarely) in civil courts. Not surprisingly, women who sued men for violence usually brought other women to court as witnesses. Though many husbands bitterly resented the women neighbors who intervened, neighbors continued to act as a vigilant and moderating force. Because of the wider social conflicts wife beating engendered, the extent of a husband's right to correct his wife was a live issue in the courts and in neighborhoods.

Ballads show irate husbands grousing that their hands are tied, although they itch to pound their wives, because their wives' friends will criticize and slander them. Neighbors upbraid the harshest wife beaters with terms leveled at their sense of honor and rationality: vicious or repeated beatings could raise the cry that a man was "bedlam" or "unmanly." Being known as a wife beater could shame some men, but others ignored such pressure until either a wife's death or the law stopped them.Faced with intransigent offenders, neighbors sometimes escalated countermeasures. In a case from Bristol in 1667, a group of neighbors surrounded a notorious wife beater and threw dirt at him, creating "a loud mocking demonstration" that strongly resembled charivari.

Another example of neighborhood discipline concerns a child beater rather than a wife beater-making it a rare case because parents' right to administer beatings was seldom questioned-but it does shed light on the verbal arsenal that communities could deploy against transgressors. In 1622, neighbors of a prominent Essex citizen named Richard Turner wrote rhymes to mock him for brutally beating his daughter Anne. Among its many verses: Hye thee home Anne, Hye thee home Anne, Whippe her arse Dicke, Will have thee anon. All those that love puddinge, Come unto Parke Street, And learne the songe, Whip Her Arse Dick. As if that weren't enough, the song goes on to compare Turner to a child murderer who had just been hanged.

Written by artisans and tradespeople, the song spread from town to town through the posting of copies and constant singing so that even children came to know the song and torment Turner with it. For a time he was forced to stay indoors, hoping the "balleting" would abate. Visual culture bears evidence of the social pressures that functioned to limit male violence and to succor the abused. "Patience Baited," an emblem by George Wither, spells out collective limits on patriarchal privilege, warning that even the meekest wife will finally turn and fight. 

The image shows a sheep attacking its tormentor, a young boy. The poem informs readers that anyone who mistreats a friend or spouse runs the risk of social ostracism: Thus, many times, a foolish man doth lose His faithfull friends, and justly makes them foes .... And by abusing of a patient Mate Turne dearest Love, into deadliest Hate: For any wrong may better bee excused, Than, Kindnesse, long, and willfully abused.

Male drunkenness was a leading cause of "kindnesse long and willfully abused," and jests involving domestic violence are generally alcohol-sodden. Many merry tales strongly criticize alcoholic husbands who ruin their health and pauperize their families. Pasquils Palinodia (1619) blames husbands for driving wives to other men's arms because of their own alehouse haunting and violent drunkenness, while Thomas Heywood's Philoconothista, or the Drunkard, Opened, Dissected, and Anatomized (1635) shows brawling, puking asses and goats served by an alewife who looks on with a touch of scorn. In some jests, wives seize the position of agency in the narrative, in a brief but significant moment of linguistic mastery.”

- Pamela Allen Brown, ““O such a rogue would be hang’d!” Shrews versus Wife Beaters.” in Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England

[mattchase82]

Conversion of a Servant of Satan Through the Intercession of Our Lady of Sorrows

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Up until 1961, the Liturgy of the Church officially contemplated the Sorrows of Our Lady during Lent in the form of the Feast of the Compassion of Mary, which was celebrated on the Friday before Palm Sunday. With the revision of the Liturgical calendar, the Compassion Feast was removed.

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The Blessed Virgin Mary told St. Bridget of Sweden that She was willing to endure any torment to save the souls of men. So great a love has our Heavenly Mother for us, that She deserves our gratitude, and that gratitude should be shown by at least meditating upon, and consoling Her in Her Sorrows. But She lamented to St. Bridget that very few did so, and that the greater part of the world lived in forgetfulness of them: "I look around at all who are on earth, to see if by chance there are any who pity Me, and meditate on My Sorrows; and I find that there are very few. Therefore, My daughter, though I am forgotten by many, at least do you not forget me. Meditate on My Sorrows and share in My grief, as far as you can ."

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In the revelations of St. Bridget we read that there was a rich man, as noble by birth as he was vile and sinful in his habits. He had given himself, by an express compact, as a slave to the devil; and for sixty successive years had served him, leading such a life as may be imagined, and never approached the sacraments. Now this prince was dying; and Jesus Christ, to show him mercy, commanded St. Bridget to tell her confessor to go and visit him and exhort him to confess his sins. The confessor went and the sick man said that he did not require confession, as he had often approached the sacrament of Penance. The priest went a second time; but this poor slave of hell persevered in his obstinate determination not to confess. Jesus again told the saint to have her confessor return. He did so; and of the third occasion told the sick man the revelation made to the saint, and that he had returned so many times because our Lord, who wished to show him mercy, had so ordered. On hearing this the dying man was touched, and began to weep: "But how," he exclaimed, "can I be saved; I, who for sixty years have served the devil as his slave, and have my soul burdened with innumerable sins?" "My son," answered the Father, encouraging him, "doubt not; if you repent of them, on the part of God I promise you pardon." Then, gaining confidence, he said to the confessor, "Father, I looked upon myself as lost, and already despaired of salvation; but now I feel a sorrow for my sins, which gives me confidence; and since God has not yet abandoned me, I will make my confession." In fact, he made his confession four times on that day, with the greatest marks of sorrow, and on the following morning received holy Communion. On the sixth day, contrite and resigned, he died. After his death, Jesus Christ again spoke to St. Bridget, and told her that the sinner was saved; that he was then in purgatory, and that he owed his salvation to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin His Mother; for the deceased, although he had lead so wicked a life, had nevertheless always had a great love and compassion for His Blessed Mother's Sorrows.

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(Taken from The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus de Liguori)

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Consecration to Our Lady of Sorrows

Most holy Virgin and Queen of Martyrs, Mary, would that I could be in Heaven, there to contemplate the honors rendered to thee by the Most Holy Trinity and by the whole Heavenly Court! But since I am still a pilgrim in this vale of tears, receive from me, thy unworthy servant and a poor sinner, the most sincere homage and the most perfect act of vassalage a human creature can offer thee. In thy Immaculate Heart, pierced with so many swords of sorrow, I place today my poor soul forever; receive me as a partaker in thy dolors, and never suffer that I should depart from that Cross on which thy only begotten Son expired for me. With thee, O Mary, I will endure all the sufferings, contradictions, infirmities, with which it will please thy Divine Son to visit me in this life. All of them I offer to thee, in memory of the Dolors which thou didst suffer during thy life, that every thought of my mind, every beating of my heart may henceforward be an act of compassion to thy Sorrows, and of complacency for the glory thou now enjoyest in Heaven. Since then, O Dear Mother, I now compassionate thy Dolors, and rejoice in seeing thee glorified, do thou also have compassion on me, and reconcile me to thy Son Jesus, that I may become thy true and loyal son (daughter); come on my last day and assist me in my last agony, even as thou wert present at the Agony of thy Divine Son Jesus, that from this painful exile I may go to Heaven, there to be made partaker of thy glory. Amen.

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The Blessed Virgin Mary revealed to St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) that seven graces are granted to the souls who honor her daily by saying seven Hail Mary's and meditating on her tears and dolors.

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1) I will grant peace to their families.

2) They will be enlightened about the divine mysteries.

3) I will console them in their pains and I will accompany them in their work.

4) I will give them as much as they ask for as long as it does not oppose the adorable will of my divine Son or the sanctification of their souls.

5) I will defend them in their spiritual battles with the infernal enemy and I will protect them at every instant of their lives.

6) I will visibly help them at the moment of their death, they will see the face of their Mother.

7) I have obtained (This Grace) from my divine Son, that those who propagate this devotion to my tears and dolors, will be taken directly from this earthly life to eternal happiness since all their sins will be forgiven and my Son and I will be their eternal consolation and joy.

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St. Alphonsus Liguori testifies to complementary revelations given by Our Lord to St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) who revealed to her that after the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven, St. John the Evangelist desired to see Her again. The favor was granted to him; and Mary appeared to him accompanied by Her Son. The saint then heard Mary ask Jesus to grant some special grace to all those who are devoted to Her Sorrows. Our Lord promised Her four principal ones:

1. That those who before death invoke the Blessed Mother in the name of her sorrows, should obtain true repentance of all their sins.

2. That He would protect in their tribulations all who remember this devotion, and that He would protect them especially at the hour of death.

3. That He would impress upon their minds the remembrance of His Passion, and that they should have their reward for it in Heaven.

4. That He would commit such devout clients to the hands of Mary, so that she might obtain for these souls all the graces she wanted to lavish upon them.

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Our Lord once said to Blessed Veronica of Binasco: "My daughter, the tears which you shed in compassion for My sufferings are pleasing to Me, but bear in mind that on account of My infinite love for My Mother, the tears you shed in compassion for her sufferings are still more precious."

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Prayers in Honor of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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Pope Pius VII Approved This Devotion in Honor of the Seven Sorrows for daily meditation in 1815:

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Opening Prayer

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O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

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(The Hail Mary is prayed a total of seven times: once after each of the seven prayers.)

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Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen

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[For the First Sorrow - The Prophecy of Simeon:]

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1. I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful, in the affliction of thy tender heart at the prophecy of the holy and aged Simeon. Dear Mother, by thy heart so afflicted, obtain for me the virtue of humility and the gift of the holy fear of God

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Hail Mary, etc.

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[For the Second Sorrow – The Flight Into Egypt:]

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2. I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful, in the anguish of thy most affectionate heart during the flight into Egypt and thy sojourn there. Dear Mother, by thy heart so troubled, obtain for me the virtue of generosity, especially toward the poor, and the gift of piety.

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Hail Mary, etc.

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[For the Third Sorrow – The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple:]

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3. I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful, in those anxieties which tried thy troubled heart at the loss of thy dear Jesus. Dear Mother, by thy heart so full of anguish, obtain for me the virtue of chastity and the gift of knowledge.

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Hail Mary, etc.

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[For the Fourth Sorrow- Mary Meets Jesus on the Way to Calvary:]

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4. I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful in the consternation of thy heart at meeting Jesus as he carried His Cross. Dear Mother, by thy heart so troubled, obtain for me the virtue of patience and the gift of fortitude.

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Hail Mary, etc.

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[For the Fifth Sorrow- Jesus Dies on the Cross:]

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5. I grieve for thee O Mary, most sorrowful, in the martyrdom which thy generous heart endured in standing near Jesus in His agony. Dear Mother, by thy afflicted heart, obtain for me the virtue of temperance and the gift of counsel.

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Hail Mary, etc.

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[For the Sixth Sorrow- Mary Receives Jesus:]

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6. I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful, in the wounding of thy compassionate heart, when the side of Jesus was struck by the lance and His Heart was pierced before His body was removed from the Cross. Dear Mother, by thy heart thus transfixed, obtain for me the virtue of fraternal charity and the gift of understanding.

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Hail Mary, etc.

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[For the Seventh Sorrow- Jesus is Placed in the Tomb:]

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7. I grieve for thee, O Mary most sorrowful, for the pangs that wrenched thy most loving heart at the burial of Jesus. Dear Mother, by thy heart sunk in the bitterness of desolation, obtain for me virtue of diligence and the gift of wisdom.

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Hail Mary, etc.

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After the seven prayers, we conclude with the following:

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V. Pray for us, O Virgin most sorrowful

R. That we made be worthy of the promises of Christ

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Let us Pray

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Let intercession be made for us, we beseech Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, now and at the hour of our death, before the throne of Thy mercy, by the Blessed Virgin Mary, Thy Mother, whose most holy soul was pierced by a sword of sorrow in the hour of Thy bitter Passion. Through Thee, Jesus Christ, Savior of the world, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

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PRAYER OF ST. ALPHONSUS DE LIGUORI

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O afflicted Virgin, O soul great in virtues, as in sorrows, both the one and the other spring from that great fire burning in thyr heart for God, the only love of thy heart!

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Mother, have pity on me, who has not loved God, and who has so greatly offended Him. Thy sorrows, it is true, assure me of pardon, but that is not sufficient. I wish to love God. Who could obtain for me that grace if not thee, who are the Mother of holy love! O Mary, Thou consolest everyone; favor me also, with thy consolations. Amen.

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PRAYER OF ST. BONAVENTURE TO

THE MOTHER OF SORROWS

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O sorrowful Virgin, unite me at least to the humiliations and wounds of thy Son, so that both He and thee may find comfort in having someone sharing thy sufferings. Oh, how happy I would be if I could do this! For is there perhaps anything greater, sweeter, or more advantageous for a person? Why dost thou not grant me what I ask? If I have offended thee, be just and pierce my heart. If I have been faithful to thee, leave me not without a reward: give me thy sorrows.

[troybeecham]

Today, the Church remembers St. Augustine of Hippo.

Ora pro nobis.

Saint Augustine of Hippo (13 November 354 – 28 August 430 AD) was a Roman citizen born in the province of Thagaste (in modern Algeria, earlier settled as a Phoenician colony), an early Western Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of the Roman colony of Hippo Regius (modern Algeria), and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God, On Christian Doctrine and Confessions.

His mother, Monica or Monnica, was a devout Christian; his father Patricius was a Pagan who converted to Christianity on his deathbed.

At the age of 11, Augustine was sent to school at Madaurus, a small Numidian city south of Thagaste. There he became familiar with Latin classical literature, as well as pagan beliefs and practices. His first insight into the nature of sin occurred when he and a number of friends stole fruit they did not want from a neighborhood garden. He tells this story in his autobiography, The Confessions. He remembers that he did not steal the fruit because he was hungry, but because "it was not permitted." His very nature, he says, was flawed. 'It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own error—not that for which I erred, but the error itself." From this incident he concluded the human person is naturally inclined to sin, and in need of the grace of Christ.

At the age of 17, through the generosity of his fellow citizen Romanianus, Augustine went to Carthage to continue his education in rhetoric. It was while he was a student in Carthage that he read Cicero's dialogue Hortensius (now lost), which he described as leaving a lasting impression and sparking his interest in philosophy. Although raised as a Christian, Augustine left the church to follow the Manichaean religion, much to his mother's despair. As a youth Augustine lived a hedonistic lifestyle for a time, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits. The need to gain their acceptance forced inexperienced boys like Augustine to seek or make up stories about sexual experiences. It was during this period that he uttered his famous prayer, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."

At about the age of 17, Augustine began an affair with a young woman in Carthage. Though his mother wanted him to marry a person of his class, the woman remained his lover for over fifteen years and gave birth to his son Adeodatus (b. 372 - d. 388 AD), who was viewed as extremely intelligent by his contemporaries.

Manichaean friends introduced him to the prefect of the City of Rome, Symmachus, who while traveling through Carthage had been asked by the imperial court at Milan to provide a rhetoric professor. Augustine won the job and headed north to take his position in Milan in late 384. Thirty years old, he had won the most visible academic position in the Latin world at a time when such posts gave ready access to political careers.

Although Augustine showed some fervour for Manichaeism, he was never an initiate or "elect", but an "auditor", the lowest level in the sect's hierarchy. While still at Carthage a disappointing meeting with the Manichaean Bishop, Faustus of Mileve, a key exponent of Manichaean theology, started Augustine's scepticism of Manichaeanism. In Rome, he reportedly turned away from Manichaeanism, embracing the scepticism of the New Academy movement. Because of his education, Augustine had great rhetorical prowess and was very knowledgeable of the philosophies behind many faiths.

At Milan, his mother's religiosity, Augustine's own studies in Neoplatonism, and his friend Simplicianus all urged him towards Christianity. Initially Augustine was not strongly influenced by Christianity and its ideologies, but after coming in contact with Ambrose of Milan, Augustine reevaluated himself and was forever changed. Like Augustine, Ambrose was a master of rhetoric, but older and more experienced. Augustine was very much influenced by Ambrose, even more than by his own mother and others he admired. Augustine arrived in Milan and was immediately taken under the wing by Ambrose. Within his Confessions, Augustine states, "That man of God received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good bishop should."

Soon, their relationship grew, as Augustine wrote, "And I began to love him, of course, not at the first as a teacher of the truth, for I had entirely despaired of finding that in thy Church—but as a friendly man." Augustine visited Ambrose in order to see if Ambrose was one of the greatest speakers and rhetoricians in the world. More interested in his speaking skills than the topic of speech, Augustine quickly discovered that Ambrose was a spectacular orator. Eventually, Augustine says that he was spiritually led into the faith of Christianity.

Augustine's mother had followed him to Milan and arranged a marriage for him. Although Augustine accepted this marriage, for which he had to abandon his concubine, he was deeply hurt by the loss of his lover. He wrote, "My mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding." Augustine confessed that he was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, so he procured another concubine since he had to wait two years until his fiancée came of age. However, his emotional wound was not healed, even began to fester. He later decided to break of his engagement and become a celibate priest.

In late August o of 386 AD at the age of 31, after having heard and been inspired and moved by the story of Ponticianus's and his friends' first reading of the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert, Augustine converted to Christianity. As Augustine later told it, his conversion was prompted by a childlike voice he heard telling him to "take up and read" (Latin: tolle, lege), which he took as a divine command to open the Bible and read the first thing he saw. Augustine read from Paul's Epistle to the Romans – the "Transformation of Believers" section, consisting of chapters 12 to 15 – wherein Paul outlines how the Gospel transforms believers, and the believers' resulting behaviour. The specific part to which Augustine opened his Bible was Romans chapter 13, verses 13 and 14, to wit:

Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.

He later wrote an account of his conversion – his very transformation, as Paul described – in his Confessions, which has since become a classic of Christian theology and a key text in the history of autobiography. This work is an outpouring of thanksgiving and penitence. Although it is written as an account of his life, the Confessions also talks about the nature of time, causality, free will, and other important philosophical topics. The following is taken from that work:

Late have I loved Thee, O Lord; and behold,

Thou wast within and I without, and there I sought Thee.

Thou wast with me when I was not with Thee.

Thou didst call, and cry, and burst my deafness.

Thou didst gleam, and glow, and dispel my blindness.

Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.

For Thyself Thou hast made us,

And restless our hearts until in Thee they find their ease.

Late have I loved Thee, Thou Beauty ever old and ever new.

Ambrose baptized Augustine, along with his son Adeodatus, in Milan on Easter Vigil, April 24–25, 387 AD. A year later, in 388, Augustine completed his apology On the Holiness of the Catholic Church. That year, also, Adeodatus and Augustine returned home to Africa. Augustine's mother Monica died at Ostia, Italy, as they prepared to embark for Africa.

Upon their arrival, they began a life of aristocratic leisure at Augustine's family's property. Soon after, Adeodatus, too, died. Augustine then sold his patrimony and gave the money to the poor. The only thing he kept was the family house, which he converted into a monastic foundation for himself and a group of friends.

In 391 Augustine was ordained a priest in Hippo Regius. He became a famous preacher (more than 350 preserved sermons are believed to be authentic), and was noted for combating the Manichaean religion, to which he had formerly adhered. In 395, he was made coadjutor Bishop of Hippo, and became full Bishop shortly thereafter, hence the name "Augustine of Hippo"; and he gave his property to the church of Thagaste. He remained in that position until his death in 430. He wrote his autobiographical Confessions in 397–398. His work The City of God was written to console his fellow Christians shortly after the Visigoths had sacked Rome in 410 AD.

When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. The segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with Augustine's On the Trinity.

Augustine worked tirelessly in trying to convince the people of Hippo to convert to Christianity. Though he had left his monastery, he continued to lead a monastic life in the episcopal residence. He left a regula for his monastery that led to his designation as the "patron saint of regular clergy".

Much of Augustine's later life was recorded by his friend Possidius, bishop of Calama, in his Sancti Augustini Vita. Possidius admired Augustine as a man of powerful intellect and a stirring orator who took every opportunity to defend Christianity against its detractors. Possidius also described Augustine's personal traits in detail, drawing a portrait of a man who ate sparingly, worked tirelessly, despised gossip, shunned the temptations of the flesh, and exercised prudence in the financial stewardship of his see.

Shortly before Augustine's death, the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that had converted to Arianism, invaded Roman Africa (and later sacked Rome in 455 AD, hence the term vandalism). The Vandals besieged Hippo in the spring of 430 AD, when Augustine entered his final illness. According to Possidius, one of the few miracles attributed to Augustine, the healing of an ill man, took place during the siege. According to Possidius, Augustine spent his final days in prayer and repentance, requesting that the penitential Psalms of David be hung on his walls so that he could read them. He directed that the library of the church in Hippo and all the books therein should be carefully preserved. He died on 28 August 430 AD. Shortly after his death, the Vandals lifted the siege of Hippo, but they returned not long thereafter and burned the city. They destroyed all of it but Augustine's cathedral and library, which they left untouched.

Augustine was canonized by popular acclaim, and later recognized as a Doctor of the Church in 1298 by Pope Boniface VIII. His feast day is 28 August, the day on which he died.

Augustine is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Churches, and the Anglican Communion and as a preeminent Doctor of the Church. He is also the patron of the Augustinians, a religious order. His memorial is celebrated on 28 August, the day of his death.

Many Protestants, especially Calvinists and Lutherans, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation and divine grace. Protestant Reformers generally, and Martin Luther in particular, held Augustine in preeminence among early Church Fathers. Luther himself was, from 1505 to 1521, a member of the Order of the Augustinian Eremites.

In the East, his teachings are more disputed, and were notably attacked by John Romanides. But other theologians and figures of the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant appropriation of his writings, chiefly Georges Florovsky. The most controversial doctrine associated with him, the filioque, was rejected by the Orthodox Church. Other disputed teachings include his views on original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination. Nevertheless, though considered to be mistaken on some points, he is still considered a saint, and has even had influence on some Eastern Church Fathers, most notably Saint Gregory Palamas. In the Orthodox Church his feast day is celebrated on 15 June.

Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has written: "[Augustine's] impact on Western Christian thought can hardly be overstated; only his beloved example Paul of Tarsus, has been more influential, and Westerners have generally seen Paul through Augustine's eyes."

Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

[pamphletstoinspire]

The New State Church Comes for You

Children as young as six are being taught “sex is assigned at birth.” They are being taught that boys and girls can be born into the wrong body, that boys can turn into girls and girls into boys. Children are being forced to use the “proper pronouns.” This is happening in the public school, where secularists believe religion was banned in 1962-63.

But none of these claims are based in science. There are no objective scientific criteria for being a new “gender,” for being non-binary, two-spirit, or even “feeling” you are the wrong sex. All of these propositions are based on faith, a new heretic-hunting faith that requires the imposition of its beliefs on younger and younger ages.

Consider forcing a boy to call another boy “she.” This is not only a monstrous lie; it is also forcing a boy to recite a religious dogma in direct violation of his own beliefs that God created them male and female.

Secularists insist that religion was banned in public schools with the school prayer decision of 1962. Secularists insist we live in a secular age. Nothing could be further from the truth. In my last column, I argued that we live in a deeply religious age, that those who claim “none” status are still profoundly religious. Even a certain percentage of atheists believe God is important to their lives. It is impossible to get away from some vision of the sacred.

In this column, I will argue not only that we live in a profoundly religious age, but that there is a new religion, perhaps a newly revived old religion, but more importantly, a newly established Church. This official state Church has been established through a series of Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the school prayer decision in 1962 and banning school-based Bible reading in 1963.

Understand, the banned school prayer was relatively anodyne:

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen.

It was written by a committee of Protestant pastors, Catholic priests, and Jewish rabbis. Thirteen New York judges upheld the constitutionality of this prayer. Thirteen. It was banned only when it reached the Supreme Court. This began the process to effectively remove Christianity from the public schools, and it also cast a disapproving pall over Christianity. Somehow, Christianity was henceforth suspect, if not dangerous for schoolchildren to hear.

A year later, the Supreme Court banned Bible reading in public schools and said that the Constitution demands government must remain “neutral” in matters of religion and that this neutrality is achieved only if the government limits itself to “secular” purposes having primarily “secular” effects.

This decision was the Supreme Court putting its thumb on the scale in the culture wars. Before this moment, there was a healthy debate in this country from the founding onward about who we are as a people. On one side are those we may call the “providentialists” who see the hand of God in history and believe this must play a role in our public life and even be taught to our schoolchildren. On the other side are the seculars who believe religion can have no part in our public lives. Both sides were represented at the founding, and the debate between the two parties continued until 1963 with this court decision.

These decisions were the beginning of an established church. “Secular” may have had many meanings over time. Most people reading this are “secular” since they are not “religious,” that is, not in religious congregations or ordained. But in the modern age, “secular” has come to mean without God, without religion. Therefore, a purely secular government must also be without God. But we also know no man can be without the sacred of some kind. And into this supposedly bare secularity came a new faith and a new established church that was spelled out in subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court; on contraception, abortion, sodomy, and same-sex marriage.

This new established Church has been communicated down through the federal government, through the Justice Department, and the Department of Education, to the state and local governments, and down to the schoolhouse down the road.

Who are the priests in this new Church? Anyone who wears a robe; judges, academics, scientists, those who hand down the new encyclicals that the faithful accept without question. They say boys may be girls. This fanciful idea has no basis in science or even reason. It is a matter of pure faith. And the faithful accept it and then force it on others, including schoolchildren.

The Supreme Court decisions on school prayer and Bible reading were crucial because prayer and the Bible were part of the story that we told about ourselves, about who we were. In that way, there is no more important place to tell the story of who we are than what we tell little children. But we no longer tell little children that story about ourselves because it has been banned by the high priests of the Supreme Court and replaced with a new story.

Gender theory is not the only denomination in the new established Church. There is also pantheism, seeing the sacred in the environment. It is interesting to note that no less than Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that Americans would have to choose between pantheism and Catholicism one day.

Yet another denomination in the new established Church is the sex-obsessed who see the sacred in the orgasm and their sexual pleasure. Those involved in things like bondage and domination speak openly about how their proclivities are deeply religious experiences.

All of these are one way or another being taught to little school children, and this has become the story we tell about ourselves in the 21st century.

At heart, it is a debate between what Professor Steven Smith calls the “Immanentists” and the “transcendents;” between those who place the sacred exclusively on the temporal plane and those who know the sacred may be present to us here and now but exists beyond our vision. This was the essential debate between the pagans in ancient Rome and the Christians. And now, the Immanentists have the whip hand, and they are using it.

Catholics and other Christians must understand that we are not merely up against a new faith but a new faith that is an established Church backed by the power of the federal, state, and local governments.

But I do not despair, and neither should you. On the contrary, as I write in my book—Under Siege: No Finer Time to be a Faithful Catholic—this is a time of rejoicing because God knows what He is about. He knew this degradation of society would be upon us. And what did He do? He sent the likes of us here, right now, to defend His creation. Things may seem very dark for us, but we must rest assured that future generations will look back with envy that they could not be here with us, when things look so very desperate, fighting against the new established Church.

BY: AUSTIN RUSE

[ariel-seagull-wings]

PRINCE CSIHAN (NETTLES).

@princesssarisa @sunlit-music @superkingofpriderock @amalthea9 @mademoiselle-princesse

(Hungarian tale, variant of Puss in Boots)

There was once—I don't know where, at the other side of seven times seven countries, or even beyond them, on the tumble-down side of a tumble-down stove—a poplar-tree, and this poplar-tree had sixty-five branches, and on every branch sat sixty-six crows; and may those who don't listen to my story have their eyes picked out by those crows!

There was a miller who was so proud that had he stept on an egg he would not have broken it. There was a time when the mill was in full work, but once as he was tired of his mill-work he said:

"May God take me out of this mill!" 

Now, this miller had an auger, a saw, and an adze, and he set off over seven times seven countries, and never found a mill. So his wish was fulfilled. On he went, roaming about, till at last he found on the bank of the Gagy, below Martonos, a tumble-down mill, which was covered with nettles. Here he began to build, and he worked, and by the time the mill was finished all his stockings were worn into holes and his garments all tattered and torn. He then stood expecting people to come and have their flour ground; but no one ever came.

One day the twelve huntsmen of the king were chasing a fox; and it came to where the miller was, and said to him: 

"Hide me, miller, and you shall be rewarded for your kindness." 

"Where shall I hide you?" said the miller, "seeing that I possess nothing but the clothes I stand in?" 

"There is an old torn sack lying beside that trough," replied the fox; "throw it over me, and, when the dogs come, drive them away with your broom." 

When the huntsmen came they asked the miller if he had seen a fox pass that way. 

"How could I have seen it; for, behold, I have nothing but the clothes I stand in?" 

With that the huntsmen left, and in a little while the fox came out and said, "Miller, I thank you for your kindness; for you have preserved me, and saved my life. I am anxious to do you a good turn if I can. Tell me, do you want to get married?" 

"My dear little fox," said the miller, "if I could get a wife, who would come here of her own free will, I don't say that I would not—indeed, there is no other way of my getting one; for I can't go among the spinning-girls in these clothes." 

The fox took leave of the miller, and, in less than a quarter of an hour, he returned with a piece of copper in his mouth. 

"Here you are, miller," said he; "put this away, you will want it ere long." 

The miller put it away, and the fox departed; but, before long, he came back with a lump of gold in his mouth. 

"Put this away, also," said he to the miller, "as you will need it before long." 

"And now," said the fox, "wouldn't you like to get married?" 

"Well, my dear little fox," said the miller, "I am quite willing to do so at any moment, as that is my special desire." 

The fox vanished again, but soon returned with a lump of diamond in his mouth. "Well, miller," said the fox, "I will not ask you any more to get married; I will get you a wife myself. And now give me that piece of copper I gave you." 

Then, taking it in his mouth, the fox started off over seven times seven countries, and travelled till he came to King Yellow Hammer's. 

"Good day, most gracious King Yellow Hammer," said the fox; "my life and death are in your majesty's hands. I have heard that you have an unmarried daughter. I am a messenger from Prince Csihan, who has sent me to ask for your daughter as his wife." "I will give her with pleasure, my dear little fox," replied King Yellow Hammer; "I will not refuse her; on the contrary, I give her with great pleasure; but I would do so more willingly if I saw to whom she is to be married—even as it is, I will not refuse her."

The fox accepted the king's proposal, and they fixed a day upon which they would fetch the lady. "Very well," said the fox; and, taking leave of the king, set off with the ring to the miller.

"Now then, miller," said the fox, "you are no longer a miller, but Prince Csihan, and on a certain day and hour you must be ready to start; but, first of all, give me that lump of gold I gave you that I may take it to His Majesty King Yellow Hammer, so that he may not think you are a nobody."

The fox then started off to the king. "Good day, most gracious king, my father. Prince Csihan has sent this lump of gold to my father the king that he may spend it in preparing for the wedding, and that he might change it, as Prince Csihan has no smaller change, his gold all being in lumps like this."

"Well," reasoned King Yellow Hammer, "I am not sending my daughter to a bad sort of place, for although I am a king I have no such lumps of gold lying about in my palace."

The fox then returned home to Prince Csihan. "Now then, Prince Csihan," said he, "I have arrived safely, you see; prepare yourself to start to-morrow."

Next morning he appeared before Prince Csihan. "Are you ready?" asked he. "Oh! yes, I am ready; I can start at any moment, as I got ready long ago."

With this they started over seven times seven lands. As they passed a hedge the fox said, "Prince Csihan, do you see that splendid castle?" "How could I help seeing it, my dear little fox." "Well," replied the fox, "in that castle dwells your wife." On they went, when suddenly the fox said, "Take off the clothes you have on, let us put them into this hollow tree, and then burn them, so that we may get rid of them." "You are right, we won't have them, nor any like them."

Then said the fox, "Prince Csihan, go into the river and take a bath." Having done so the prince said, "Now I've done." "All right," said the fox; "go and sit in the forest until I go into the king's presence." The fox set off and arrived at King Yellow Hammer's castle. "Alas! my gracious king, my life and my death are in thy hands. I started with Prince Csihan with three loaded wagons and a carriage and six horses, and I've just managed to get the prince naked out of the water." The king raised his hands in despair, exclaiming, "Where hast thou left my dear son-in-law, little fox?" "Most gracious king, I left him in such-and-such a place in the forest." The king at once ordered four horses to be put to a carriage, and then looked up the robes he wore in his younger days and ordered them to be put in the carriage; the coachman and footman to take their places, the fox sitting on the box.

When they arrived at the forest the fox got down, and the footman, carrying the clothes upon his arm, took them to Prince Csihan. Then said the fox to the servant, "Don't you dress the prince, he will do it more becomingly himself." He then made Prince Csihan arise, and said, "Come here, Prince Csihan, don't stare at yourself too much when you get dressed in these clothes, else the king might think you were not used to such robes." Prince Csihan got dressed, and drove off to the king. When they arrived, King Yellow Hammer took his son-in-law in his arms and said, "Thanks be to God, my dear future son-in-law, for that He has preserved thee from the great waters; and now let us send for the clergyman and let the marriage take place."

The grand ceremony over, they remained at the court of the king. One day, a month or so after they were married, the princess said to Prince Csihan, "My dear treasure, don't you think it would be as well to go and see your realm?" Prince Csihan left the room in great sorrow, and went towards the stables in great trouble to get ready for the journey he could no longer postpone. Here he met the fox lolling about. As the prince came his tears rolled down upon the straw. "Hollo! Prince Csihan, what's the matter?" cried the fox. "Quite enough," was the reply; "my dear wife insists upon going to see my home." "All right," said the fox; "prepare yourself, Prince Csihan, and we will go."

The prince went off to his castle and said, "Dear wife, get ready; we will start at once." The king ordered out a carriage and six, and three waggons loaded with treasure and money, so that they might have all they needed. So they started off. Then said the fox, "Now, Prince Csihan, wherever I go you must follow." So they went over seven times seven countries. As they travelled they met a herd of oxen. "Now, herdsmen," said the fox, "if you won't say that this herd belongs to the Vasfogu Bába, but to Prince Csihan, you shall have a handsome present." With this the fox left them, and ran straight to the Vasfogu Bába. "Good day, my mother," said he. "Welcome, my son," replied she; "it's a good thing for you that you called me your mother, else I would have crushed your bones smaller than poppy-seed." "Alas! my mother," said the fox, "don't let us waste our time talking such nonsense, the French are coming!" "Oh! my dear son, hide me away somewhere!" cried the old woman. "I know of a bottomless lake," thought the fox; and he took her and left her on the bank, saying, "Now, my dear old mother, wash your feet here until I return." The fox then left the Vasfogu Bába, and went to Prince Csihan, whom he found standing in the same place where he left him. He began to swear and rave at him fearfully. "Why didn't you drive on after me? come along at once." They arrived at the Vasfogu's great castle, and took possession of a suite of apartments. Here they found everything the heart could wish for, and at night all went to bed in peace.

Suddenly the fox remembered that the Vasfogu Bába had no proper abode yet, and set off to her. "I hear, my dear son," said she, "that the horses with their bells have arrived; take me away to another place." The fox crept up behind her, gave her a push, and she fell into the bottomless lake, and was drowned, leaving all her vast property to Prince Csihan. "You were born under a lucky star, my prince," said the fox, when he returned; "for see I have placed you in possession of all this great wealth." In his joy the prince gave a great feast to celebrate his coming into his property, so that the people from Bánczida to Zsukhajna were feasted royally, but he gave them no drink. "Now," said the fox to himself, "after all this feasting I will sham illness, and see what treatment I shall receive at his hands in return for all my kindness to him." So Mr. Fox became dreadfully ill, he moaned and groaned so fearfully that the neighbours made complaint to the prince. "Seize him," said the prince, "and pitch him out on the dunghill." So the poor fox was thrown out on the dunghill. One day Prince Csihan was passing that way. "You a prince!" muttered the fox; "you are nothing else but a miller; would you like to be a house-holder such as you were at the nettle-mill?" The prince was terrified by this speech of the fox, so terrified that he nearly fainted. "Oh! dear little fox, do not do that," cried the prince, "and I promise you on my royal word that I will give you the same food as I have, and that so long as I live you shall be my dearest friend and you shall be honoured as my greatest benefactor."

He then ordered the fox to be taken to the castle, and to sit at the royal table, nor did he ever forget him again.

So they lived happily ever after, and do yet, if they are not dead. May they be your guests to-morrow!

[libidomechanica]

Good Betty, going hurt my wit

Good Betty, going hurt my wit.     He speak, but I, my though hate even the locked dropped her none     vs can touch. Not even

of Denmark, for grog, and places     that mars her which, stars her mind is lost Eloisa spread     like some I’m sure victorian

knew sever; and if thou     seest theirs along veins children, what you’d pinch the truths transparent     could I defy history

to stocking days what of     insolence with its songs of dreadful by his rough a feathered     that clench’d by adding on

the logic of a star that turns     her bristled as if by force. Beauty call, because I love     you I love; and be the

dead. The grass’s fall she is not so,     greates assigned. You are thou must turn out of words of     emotionless, they clung fast

flying Time she’s my real swell he     wish’d boat for a scorner, or by one, and leaving kiss, a     kiss, thought of constantly

when valiant streak the strange grows to     starbursts by thee to be whole of the devil of and tried     to climbing. To shepherd

sang in height amongst the sky, a     part her. By the turned their wine, sweet order place himself with     To be more Minerva

than when Rome in hear with decked on     sheets like crescents o’er they will tended by its label, which     were Noah’s ark went in his

inke, and yet courteous matter’d,     saying—Never Night-gear wrought, had been came. He but sings we     felt the shining its

signify their moral people must     beholding havoc with its own right honourable; I     wish well those two blank, and

then only by you: not grace, and     person, and the blade glancing hand hung round him; by the Town.     Which once more than moon, yet

court, love for I was a child, I     spake as much as the hilts? Leander, they are rags the place     the Pope is made! Magnanimous

Despair along wilt perchant-     vessels side, and long expected will now, though we dare!     She was out wine, summer

height; an’ she has twa sparkling     roguish een. Of the front, until the sigh o’er the stern-post,     all pure Wine, to us

none to whom your late dissemblies     of a broad she wakened all the shore. ’ If once drinks of     Nature made, for having.

[theladyofdeath]

Rags & Riches {15}

Summary: An A Court of Thorns and Roses Fanfiction. 19th century AU. Based on the prompt sent in by @cat5313 All characters belong to SJM, I am just a fan with a plot.

Warning: Mature content strung throughout.

A/N: totally cried while writing this chapter, and i have no idea why. so, take that as you wish..

Leave a comment to be tagged & tell me what you think! :)

They had been on the ship sailing to the continent, for Hybern, for four days. Nearing the port, Rhysand was near death.

“Who would have known that the Lord of Velaris had such seasickness?”

Rhysand groaned, opening his eyes to find Cassian, humor dancing in his hazel eyes.

“I hate you,” Rhysand murmured. “And your ability to be on the water without vomiting every five minutes.” 

Cassian chuckled. “Well, we should be there within the hour, they say.”

Rhysand rolled over on his cot. “I do not think that makes me feel any better.” 

Cassian nodded, fully in agreement. 

The journey had been tense, except for when the ale came out. When the ale came out, everything became better, if only for a little while.

“Training begins tomorrow at dawn,” Cassian continued. “They say they expect the first attack to happen soon after. So, tonight is our last night of freedom. For some time, at least.”

“I don’t care what happens,” Rhysand mumbled. “As long as I get off this fucking ship and back onto dry land.” 

Trying not to laugh at the miserable bastard in the cot next to his, Cassian took a clay pipe out of his sack and packed it with tobacco. “Have a smoke. You’ll feel better.”

“Every time you say that I do it,” Rhysand mumbled. “And every time I do it, I do not feel better whatsoever.”

“Not even a bit?” Cassian asked, igniting a match. A moment later, their end of the cabin was clouded with smoke. 

“Well,” Rhysand began, opening his eyes. “Perhaps a bit.”

Cassian passed his pipe across the way before leaning back against the wooden wall of the cabin. “One day I’ll be able to afford cigars.” 

“Yeah?” Rhysand asked, passing it back. “After the war, you think you’ll give the business a shot?”

Cassian shrugged. “I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll send some of my soldier’s pay back home to my mum and sister, but, I’ll be able to save some. Not a lot, of course, but enough.”

Rhysand nodded, resting on his hands intertwined behind his head. “And what of Lady Nesta?”

Cassian remained silent for a minute, bonding with his tobacco. “I will keep my promise. Of course, we will see if she still wants me. We do not know how long this will last. What if years go by and I return then? She will most likely be already married. To a Lord. I am fully aware, no matter how I feel, that I am far outside her social class.”

“But you love her?” Rhysand asked, staring at the ceiling.

“Yes,” Cassian said. “I told her as much.”

“Did she say the same to you?”

Cassian snorted. “I do not think that Nesta has ever told anyone that she has loved them. But, she made me promise to come back to her. I like to think, in Nesta’s own way, that was her telling me that she loved me, too.” 

Rhysand nodded, taking the pipe from Cassian’s outstretched arm and breathing it in, before handing it back. “Feyre tells me Nesta is a difficult woman.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“You like that about her?” Rhysand grinned. “That she’s difficult?”

“Apparently,” Cassian laughed, keeping the pipe close to his lips. “She never bores me, that’s certain. She is wild, and passionate, behind a cold mask. But when we are alone...she is fierce.”

“Are we talking about in bed?” Rhysand asked. “Because I could see that.”

Cassian opened his mouth to say no, but then he reconsidered. Rhysand, seeing his hesitation, laughed. 

“Ah,” the violet-eyed Lord continued. “I suddenly see Lady Nesta in a whole new light.”

Cassian rummaged through his sack, pulling out a novel that was snuck into his bag the night before he left. 

The works of William’s Wordsworth. 

It was a beautiful book, pristine condition. She had placed it next to his old, beat-up copy of Keats.

He ran his fingers over the cover, taking another puff from his pipe. 

“When we make love, she takes the mask off,” Cassian said. “The only time she takes off her mask, completely. Her eyes grow soft. She unclenches her jaw. Her shoulders are no longer rigid. She lets herself feel when we fuck. She never lets herself feel anything, but she lets herself when we make love. Before I left, she was starting to take the mask off when we weren’t fucking, too. When we were together, no matter what we were doing...the mask came off.”

Rhysand watched him, having rolled onto his side. He nodded. “Feyre told me that she feels too much, much more than most people, so she pretends she feels nothing and cares for no one.”

“She is very good at pretending,” Cassian said, a smile growing. “But she does not pretend with me.” 

Cassian had told Rhysand of he and Nesta once they left days before, after Nesta had kissed him goodbye. Rhysand had not asked much about it then, surely not wanting to pry.

“We will come back from this,” Rhysand said. “You will keep your promise to her.”

Cassian nodded, leaning his head back as he blew smoke into the air above. He cleared his throat. “What of Feyre?”

Rhysand chuckled. “Are we back to talking about in bed? She is mad, but I am sure you assumed as much.”

Cassian laughed, finding the eyes of his friend. “I do not assume anything of your wife in bed.”

“She’s very dominant,” Rhysand purred. “She likes to be on top.”

Cassian swore. “I’m sure you love that.”

“What’s not to love?” Rhysand said, sighing affectionately. “I just lay back and relax. She does all the work. Very sharp nails, though, my chest still looks as if I was attacked by a wild animal.”

Cassian laughed, so loudly that a few others looked from their cots to the back corner where the two sat. “She is a good woman, Feyre.”

Rhysand’s eyes softened. He nodded. “She is. Perfect. I had to leave her too soon, my wife. We fucked all through the night, after the wedding guests left. No protection.”

Cassian looked sideways at his friend, passing his pipe along the small gap between them. Rhysand took it as Cassian said, “Trying for a child?”

Rhsyand blew smoke as he passed the pipe back. He shrugged. “I know we keep saying that we will come back from this, but if we do not….I know she has my estate, everything I have is hers, now. But...if she is with child, although I know that it is not a certain thing….I know it often takes time to get pregnant.” Rhysand cleared her throat, eyes shining in the dimmed light of the cabin. “We wanted to try, in case I do not come back. If I do not make it out of this, she may have a child to look at, and love, and think of me.” 

Cassian listened with a heavy heart. There were no words to say, none that would make a difference. They could laugh and joke and drink and smoke all they wanted, but they both knew what they were forced to leave behind. 

Cassian opened the golden-bound book of Wordsworth to a poem that had been bookmarked. She had underlined the first half, eight lines, from I Travelled Among Unknown Men.

Cassian put his pipe down as he read:

“I travelled among unknown men,

In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then

What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!

Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time; for still I seem

To love thee more and more.”

He unfolded the note, the note he had read countless times since finding the book within his bag. The note she had used as a bookmark. 

Dear Cassian,

I hope you find this soon. I know you only have Keats to read, and I thought you would like something else to help you pass the time. Wordsworth is one of my favorites. I think you will enjoy him.

Do not worry about me while you are away. I will be fine, I have Feyre to keep me company, as she also has to send away someone she cares for. But I will be worrying about you, every minute of every day. I fear for you, for what you will have to endure, for what you will have to see. 

But when you find yourself in despair, remember that I am thinking of you. Remember that I am at home, waiting for you to return. As Wordsworth reminds us in this poem, sometimes we do not realize how much we care for someone until they are taken from us. I have always known that I care for you, Cassian, but now, on the eve before you leave, my heart aches. The thought of you leaving me leaves a hollowness inside of me that I have never known.

(Even though you are snoring obnoxiously behind me. Try to control that. Surely the other men in your camp will poke fun at you for it.)

I assume you will wake again soon, and we will make love once more. When you are lonely, remember what it feels like to have my hands on your skin, to have my mouth against your own. I know that is what I will be thinking of when the loneliness consumes me. Of how it feels when you are inside of me, holding onto me as if I am far more precious than I am. 

I pushed you away. And because of that, we did not have enough time. So you must promise me, Cassian, every day, that you will come back to me.

Write to me.

Promise me.

Come back to me.

Nesta

Cassian folded up the note, and put it back in the book to mark the page. He had just put the book back into his bag as Rhysand grabbed a bucket from under his cot, and wretched. 

Cassian reached across the way and patted his friend on the back. “We’ll be there soon, Rhys. Almost there.”

He just didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse.

~~~~~

Feyre found Nesta in the library. She sat on the bench by the window, a book open on her lap, but her eyes were far away. As Feyre sat next to her, she realized her sister was staring out at the stables.

“Hey,” she said, quietly.

Nesta met her eyes but said nothing.

“We got a letter from Elain,” Feyre continued, and smiled. “She has news.”

She handed the letter to her sister, who read over it quickly. Her eyes were wide as she neared the end. She looked to Feyre, and laughed. “She’s with child?”

Feyre nodded, excitedly. “She’s with child.”

Nesta’s laughter faded and her eyes welled up with tears. She quickly looked away, back out the window.

Feyre leaned back against the glass, her hand resting on top of her eldest sister’s. She had given Nesta plenty of space, she knew how she operated. She had not said a word about Nesta’s goodbye to Cassian days before. They had eaten their meals together, but in silence. Otherwise, they had kept to themselves.

“Azriel had to go,” Nesta said, quietly. “Elain is now alone and with child.”

“She is strong,” Feyre said. “Stronger and far more brave than we ever gave her credit for.”

Nesta nodded her agreement. “It just is not fair, that is all.”

“I know,” Feyre agreed. “My husband left the day after we wed.”

Nesta nodded, eyes distant beyond the glass. “I am truly sorry.” 

“It is alright,” Feyre said, although she did not truly feel that way. Nesta knew it, too. “And what of you?”

“What of me?” Nesta breathed.

“Is it alright?”

Nesta met her sister’s gaze. They shared the same eyes, the eyes of their mother. “I have yet to decide.”

“Are you in love with him?” Feyre asked.

“He said he was in love with me,” Nesta whispered. 

“That does not answer my question,” Feyre said.

Nesta shook her head. “I could not say it back.”

“Because it is not true?”

“Because once you say it,” Nesta began, voice breaking, “it’s out there. And there is no taking it back. If I said it, and he dies in this bloody war….I could not say it.”

Feyre nodded. “I understand that.”

Nesta snorted. “How so? You married Rhysand the day before he left!”

Feyre sighed, not phased by Nesta’s rise in anger, by the emotion shining in her eyes. “Yes, I did. Because I wanted to be his wife. Even if he does not return, I will still be his wife. I will always be his wife. But, that does not mean that it does not scare me, Nesta. I gave my heart away, and he took it with him to the continent. The thought of my heart never coming back is terrifying.”

Nesta shook her head. 

“They will come back,” Feyre said. “Both of them.”

Nesta nodded, staring at their hands.

“Until then, I am here,” Feyre promised. “I will not go anywhere.”

“Nor will I,” Nesta said, jaw clenched. 

Feyre smiled, a comforting gesture that Nesta did not return. 

But she did not move her hand. Neither of them did.

~~~~~

Elain sat in an old armchair she had purchased from an elderly woman across the hall who no longer had any need for it, a black cat sitting on her lap.

She had found it, a stray, searching for scraps in town. Elain had immediately picked the underweight cat up, and taken him home. 

“Well, Knight,” she said, “we now have an armchair and a bed.”

She looked to the thin, rickety bed she had gotten after selling her jewels. Big enough for two, if they liked to cuddle. 

Which she and Azriel surely did.

Until his return, Knight would be curling up with her every night. For how many nights, she was not certain. 

She had written to her sisters, telling them she was with child. She knew they would be overjoyed. 

“Well, Knight, how shall we spend our evening?” she asked.

The cat meowed, softly.

“A lovely thought,” Elain agreed. “Perhaps we should read for a while, or go downstairs to the shop and talk to Miryam downstairs. She should be closing up soon.”

Miryam’s aunt owned the candy shop down below, but her aunt had grown ill so Miryam was running it for her. Elain and her had become quick friends. 

Knight did not respond. When Elain looked at her lap, his eyes were closed and he was breathing softly. 

With a laugh, Elain put her palm against her stomach. “Well, I suppose we will just stay in, then. The three of us.”

Elain closed her eyes and prayed to whoever was listening that Azriel arrived on the Continent safely. 

And she hoped that he knew that she was thinking about him, and that she loved him fiercely. 

Elain sat in the armchair in their quiet, little apartment, until she drifted into a deep sleep. 

~~~~~

It had taken Azriel a moment to steady his legs once stepping off the ship. He was not sure what time it was, but the sun was beginning to sink. He looked around. The continent did not look much different than home. 

Three ships had docked, and untrained soldiers were unloading. 

Azriel hadn’t gotten far when he heard his name being called. He quickly scanned the crowd until he saw Cassian and Rhysand, hurrying toward him, the latter pale and stumbling.

“I am glad to see you both,” Azriel said. He had just spent days alone in the middle of the ocean. “How was your journey?”

“Not bad,” Cassian said, as Rhysand doubled over and puked among the grass. “For me, at least. Rhys here gets seasick very easily, apparently.”

Rhysand stood up and wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. “Fuck.”

Azriel nodded, trying to rein in his smile. “Well, at least we are on land now.”

Rhysand groaned.

“We are meant to gather at the foot of the hill,” Cassian said, gesturing behind Azriel. “We will begin setting up camp, hopefully by the time it gets dark.”

Azriel sighed, hiking the strap of his bag up higher on his shoulder. “Shall we, then?”

Cassian clapped Rhysand on the back, who nearly fell over from the impact. “Do we have a choice?”

“Afraid not,” Azriel grumbled.

“I’m going to die before I even reach camp,” Rhysand mumbled.

Cassian met Azriel’s gaze with a grin. “I have also learned that Lord Rhysand is quite overdramatic.”

“Fuck you,” Rhysand crooned.

“Only if I get lonely enough, then I suppose you’ll do,” Cassian promised with a wink. Rhysand laughed and shook his head, pushing his hair back. “Until then, soldiers, we walk.”

Azriel nodded, keeping next to the others as they joined the line of men.

It had begun. 

~~~~~

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[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Love of Life, A Duty

by David Merrill

"Remember now, O Yahweh, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore." - Isaiah 38:3

There is a natural love of life, and yet how few understand its value or the purpose for which it was given. How few feel that a whole eternity depends upon it. Days and years are wasted in those things that cannot profit. The great mass seem to have no proper medium, but go to the extremes of presumption and despair. It is wasted as if it could have no end and could not be exhausted, or it is suffered to rust out in idleness as if it had no object and no proper use. But, whether men are aware of it or not, life has a determined object--an object that cannot be accomplished without effort.

There is much to endure; there is much, very much, to be done. And what our hands find to do, we are to do with our might. We must enter heartily into all the appropriate business of life. We form characters for eternity. We sow seed whose fruit of good or evil, according to the seed, we shall reap forever. Here we receive that hue of righteousness or wickedness which fits for heaven or hell, which all eternity will but deepen. How important, then, this present life! And how foolish to dream it away in idle fancies or merely to be busy here and there! The beasts have their appropriate object in existence, and it is answered without their concurrence or consent. And with appetites satisfied they sink to rest, remembering no evil past, anticipating none future. And shall man live and die like them? Eat and drink, and sink to rest or rise up to play? Or spend all his strength and labor and thought about those things which perish with the using, laying up treasures on earth and none in heaven? Immortal interests are involved in this present life. It is the most important field that men can occupy.

Life is not too long, at longest, to answer life's great end. There is something still to do, or bear. No human being on earth ought, through depression of spirits or false views of life, to make himself useless. All cannot serve their generation in the same way, nor is the same kind of service needed from all; but each according to his several ability, or the circumstances in which the providence of God has placed him. An example of faith and patience in the midst of severe and protracted affliction is not lost upon the world, nor is cheerful resignation in extreme poverty and age. The world needs such examples, and they are among the most useful that can be presented. They teach, experimentally and practically, lessons of the utmost importance and deepest interest. Those that cannot labor for Christ may suffer for him, and those that have no power of language to speak for him may yet exhibit in real life the power of his grace and exhibit it with a force and vividness that no language can equal. And then, who shall calculate the influence of their prayers, who are princes in disguise and have power with God and prevail. There is a great and grievous mistake upon this subject, arising from very partial and limited views.

A man who can no longer labor at his vocation or do business to his own advantage is too often deemed useless; and in spite of himself, perhaps, in measure partakes of the same feeling. "I am this day fourscore years old," as said Barzillai. "Can thy servant taste what I eat, or what I drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men or singing women? Wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord, the king." This was a good reason why he should not go to court, since age had unfitted him for its duties. But was Barzillai, though fourscore years old, useless? In a time of trouble and rebellion, his influence in favor of the right was better than a thousand fighting men. There is always a legitimate motive to live.

[insinqronicity]

Love Lost

I don’t know what to make of this For I’ve not tasted Satan’s kiss You nihilistic hedonist I thought I got you but I missed

So what is true, and where am I And how did you fill up my sky With thoughts and oughts of you, and why Do I feel blue when I stop my

Endless process of boxing up Perhaps excess spills out my cup I must confess, I am a mess I’m dying here but I digress

The cliff is sheer and much too near Nothing is as it does appear My musings are not more than mere Attempts I make to so cohere

And match my map to its terrain But now I do confound my brain What I yet mean in meaning’s name Is that our loves are not the same

For loyalty in love you see Has always seemed, to me, to be Necessity, or destiny For none are free when love takes thee

Compelling them to hate the thought Of battles lost but never fought What is the cost to court the court To plead for what you’ve always sought

To lead me through your weary mind In desperate hopes that I will find That in this act we are in kind As if one copes completely blind

I learnt the ropes before my dear And I know how we end up here These tired old tropes that trace a tear Are only now becoming clear

For it was just as I did fear You left without saying goodbye How did we get from there to here And which of us did truly try

The narrative inside your head In which you see yourself as sly Is nothing more than what I’ve said And in my books fiction don’t fly

A story spun from silver tongue Intoxicant with which you ply Young souls whose song your soul has sung Enchanting is your set of I

Decanting desperate despair Expressed as but a bitter sigh I’m breathing in this toxic air Stuck in a rut of what and why

I thought our ought was to be fair In lovely life and love yet lost Yet now it seems like you don’t care And all I feel from you is frost

It’s almost more than I can bare And yet in store as in your stare As in your core, it’s stormy there Lovers at war are more a pair

You’re young of mind but old of heart I guess I knew that from the start Untame by name, I should have known That if, perhaps, you thought you’d grown

Beyond the point where we could walk Without our losing sight of we That you would not know how to talk Or take responsibility

You hypocrite, you harlot whore I made my home a scarlet score Inside your heart, you were my art Despite our poem you locked the door

And in the pause of plausible That you made up to take your space I audited the audible And found my fear to be the case

You lied to me and then you left That’s not enough - cardiac theft? I like it rough but really dude With loyalty I’ve never screwed

But you and he do what you will I know you’d do it anyway Lying is an artistic skill Lie to yourself and let it sway

Your view of what you think I’d do Despite the fact I’m true to you You’re loyal right, that’s what you said Yet you’re willing to share his bed

A traitorous and tortured tool Who I helped shape since back in school I helped him grow, made sure to show Him how to know he was no fool

A fool of me he has yet made As has the snake with which he laid And could I cast a cogent curse I would not will it any worse

So as I end my final verse I hope my tone is not too terse I loathe that you’d let our love fade You’ve never yet, your piper, paid.

[dwellordream]

“Texts about petty treason clearly depict where and how women murder their husbands, but they have more trouble explaining why women do so. Just as the murderous wife challenged the conceptions of women's legal and moral stature on which marriage and social order depended, she also posed a problem for the many writers-hacks, ministers, legal personnel (judges, justices of the peace, clerks, and theorists), chroniclers, playwrights, and balladeers-who rushed to tell and sell her story. These authors attempt to tell a story in which a wife becomes the protagonist without conferring too much authority, prestige, or sympathy on a criminal, married woman. 

For only through transgression could such women, usually wives of yeomen, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and small landowners, demand attention outside of the household and neighborhood; only thus could they become the topic of debate in legal treatises and on streetcomers, the focus of attention in courtrooms and on scaffolds; only through transgression could they command a place at the center of a popular narrative as the protagonist of the story. If killing her husband made it possible for a wife to be at the center of a story, it remained a difficult story to tell. Certainly pamphlets describe who did what to whom with ease. Yet the texts that struggle to tell the story of a wife's transgression attempt to redress it through a didacticism that restricts the narration of her motives and desires. 

Once the writers begin to explore motives, they lose control of the moral of the story, for the more the reader engages with the wife the less simple the lesson becomes. To imagine, let alone sympathize or identify with, the frustrations of a wife is to question the legal and moral assumption that in the household there is only one citizen, one legal agent, one property owner, one decision maker: the husband. Some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts employ an explanation for the behavior of murderous wives that we often see in today's news and in popular culture; they represent the murderer as a battered wife who resorts to violence in despair and self-defense. Contrary to reductive analyses of the early modern family and the position of women in it, these period texts suggest a popular perception that husbands sometimes beat their wives to an extent that exceeded lawful correction and prudence and that beatings put wives in "a fit humour for the devill to worke on." 

Alice Clarke, for instance, is described as having visible bruises at the time that she is apprehended and examined for killing her husband. Even Henry Goodcole, the minister who counsels her and writes the gruesomely titled The Adultresses Funerall Day (1635) about her case, sees a connection between those bruises and her actions. The beatings described in such texts include not only drunken and impulsive assaults "with the next cudgell that came accidentally unto his hand" but also sadistic, eroticized rituals, such as "tying her to his bed-post to strip her and whippe her, etc." Although pamphlets exploit the titillation of such stories, despite the coy propriety of that "etc.," they also suggest that husbands could be uncontrolled, savage, and "unnatural," and that wives, especially those isolated from friends and neighbors by shame, distance, and religious or ethnic difference, might have felt that violence was their only recourse. 

Under common law, husbands had a legal right to beat their wives; however, the limits on this right were debated in conduct literature and explored in ecclesiastical courts when members of the community feared that excessive beatings threatened the wife's life and the peace of the neighborhood. The law did not spell out the limits on discipline except to assume that husbands did not have the right to kill their wives. As Martin Ingram explains, "Domestic relations were thus on the borders of public and private morality in this period-matters to be influenced by exhortation but not ordinarily by the exercise of formal discipline." To say that domestic relations remained outside "formal" discipline is not to say that they were unobserved or unregulated; neighbors and the local community exerted informal control over marriage and domesticity in many ways, including confrontation, shaming rituals, and bringing the offending couple before the justice of the peace for "unquietness." 

A husband's authority over his wife remained legally and morally ambiguous, even if the community's scrutiny constrained him. Since a husband's treatment of his wife remained largely beyond legal regulation, conduct literature appealed to the husband's judgment, urging him to regulate himself. In one of the many discussions of wifebeating in conduct literature, William Gouge suggests that beating one's wife undermines household governance because it opens up a space between the husband and wife, revealing that they are not one flesh, not one legal agent, but two: "Now a wife having no ground to be perswaded that her husband hath authority to beat her, what hope is there that she will patiently beare it, and be bettered by it? Or rather is it not likely that she will if she can, rise against him, over-master him (as many do) and never doe any duty aright?"

The husband's violence threatens to incite a contest for mastery; once the context of violence enables the wife to enter the fray as a combatant, the outcome is uncertain. One account of a wife's reaction to a marital rape, which we might not expect to find recognized as an offense in this period, clearly shows how a wife's subjectivity is constructed as violent, as a choice of her own life over her husband's life. In her examination recorded in A Hellish Murder (I688), Mary Aubrey (or Hobry), a French midwife, describes a history of dissension with her husband because she would not cooperate with him "in Villanies contrary to Nature." 

On the night of the murder, after beating her savagely, "he attempted the Forcing of this Examinate to the most Unnatural of Villanies, and acted such a Violence upon her Body in despite of all the Opposition that she could make, as forc'd from her a great deal of Blood, this Examinate crying out to her Landlady, who was (as she believes) out of distance of hearing her.” When she insists that she cried out, Aubrey employs the strategy of the rape victim, who had to demonstrate that she had made a "hue and cry" and thus had not consented. In presenting Aubrey's compelling testimony about this assault, A Hellish Murder not only suggests limits on a husband's rights to and power over his wife's body but also constructs a subjectivity for Mary Aubrey out of her despair, her sense of grievance, and her determination to escape. 

Aubrey finally demands of her husband, "Am I to lead this Life for ever?" only to receive more threats in response. In asking that question, Mary Aubrey is portrayed as raising a voice and imagining herself as having a life separate from and in conflict with her husband's. By depicting her reaction to abuse and her contemplation of retaliatory violence, this text constitutes Aubrey as a self-conscious, speaking subject. Later, beside her sleeping husband, she thinks "with her self," "What will become of me? What am I to do! Here am I Threatned to be Murder'd, and I have no way in the World to Deliver my self, but by Beginning with him." Aubrey's subjectivity is seen not only as the midwife's deliverance of herself but as a birth that depends on a death. 

"Immediately upon these thoughts," she stoutly undertakes the murder of her husband, strangling and dismembering him, and lugging parts of his body around in her petticoat to dispose of them. Popular accounts of petty treason usually shy away from such risky representation of a wife's conscious articulation of rights that are allied to violence by their very conception. The resulting attempts both to account for the complexities of domestic friction and to achieve some sympathy for the abused wife, while keeping authority vested in the husband, however tyrannous, can verge on the absurd. 

Goodcole describes one "young and tender" wife, who, repenting after administering poison to her "old, peevish," and abusive husband, fruitlessly pleads with him to take an antidote to preserve his life. "Nay thou Strumpet and murderesse," Goodcole reports him as saying, "I will receive no helpe at all but I am resolvd to dye and leave the world, be it for no other cause, but to have thee burnt at a stake for my death." * Although the wife is executed at Smithfield, Goodcole regards the husband, in his spiteful insistence on dying, as the agent. Sarah Elston, in her scaffold confession as recorded in A Warning for Bad Woo (1678), "protested again most seriously, that she never in her life had the least designe or thoughts of killing [her husband], onely it was an unfortunate Accident; and whether it came by a blow from her, or his violent running upon the point of the sizzars as she held them out to defend her self, she could not to this minute certainly tell."

These comic moments reveal how pamphleteers who wish to portray murderous wives as penitent and pitiful must awkwardly scramble to shield them from the imputation of intending to kill, just as they are presented as shielding themselves from blows. To characterize such women as assessing their hopeless situations and deciding to take violent action to escape them, that is, to present them as subjects, is also to remove them from sympathy and to open up disturbing implications about the marital relation of authority and submission. Writers in effect displace responsibility onto the husbands, positioning them as still in charge, even if drunken, violent, and absurdly self-destructive. In representations of domestic conflict in early modem popular culture-ballads, pamphlets, and plays, shaming rituals and jokes- the wife diminishes or usurps her husband's claims to authority as she asserts herself by committing adultery, beating or bossing her husband, or plotting to kill him.

For instance, Arden of Faversham (1592), a play about an actual case of petty treason, can be seen as an extended cuckold joke. Like such jokes, and like popular shaming rituals such as the charivari, the play holds the cuckolded husband responsible for his wife's adultery and insubordination. If the husband and wife become a joint subject at marriage, then, these popular representations seem to suggest, the wife's enlargement into volition, speech, and action necessarily implicates, diminishes, and even eliminates the husband. These popular representations push the logic of coverture to suggest an economy of marital subjectivity that leaves room for only one subject. They constitute the wife as a subject only to the extent that they qualify her husband's claims to subject status by silencing and immobilizing him and casting doubt on his authority and potency. 

The fact that popular accounts of such crimes acknowledge the role of abuse in inciting women to murder challenges assumptions we still have about women's rights within marriage and the monolithic power wives who defied the patriarchy during this period. It also complicates the notion of petty treason by introducing the possibility of tyrannous household government and by suggesting, albeit hesitantly, that there arc some justifications for rebellion. Certainly, contemporary debates about the limits on conscientious submission to civil and domestic authorities have a bearing on relations within the household and the understanding of petty treason. Writers of sermons and conduct books about marriage explicitly include the situation of the godly wife in their considerations of the limits on obedience to earthly authority; they advocate a demanding balance between submission and resistance, silence and good counsel.

In those cases of petty treason that resulted in convictions and made it into print, however, the circumstances in the household did not mitigate the wife's guilt. These women were executed as petty traitors despite their husbands' inadequacies as household governors. Although juries may actually have taken extenuating circumstances into consideration when they deliberated over cases of petty treason, these texts hold the husband responsible as well as depict the execution of the guilty wife; they recognize limits to a husband's power over his wife, yet present a wife's violent resistance as ultimately unjustifiable and destructive of the political order. Popular representations make these contradictions between husbandly authority and wifely submission visible, but they do not resolve them.”

- Frances E. Dolan, “Home-Rebels and House-Traitors: Petty Treason and the Murderous Wife.” in Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550 - 1700

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To Hope by John Keats

When by my solitary hearth I sit, And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom; When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom; Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night, Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray, Should sad Despondency my musings fright, And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away, Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof, And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof.

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair, Strive for her son to seize my careless heart; When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air, Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart: Chace him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright, And fright him as the morning frightens night!

Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow, O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer; Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow: Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain, From cruel parents, or relentless fair; O let me think it is not quite in vain To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air! Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

In the long vista of the years to roll, Let me not see our country's honour fade: O let me see our land retain her soul, Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade. From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed— Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest, Great Liberty! how great in plain attire! With the base purple of a court oppress'd, Bowing her head, and ready to expire: But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings That fill the skies with silver glitterings!

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud; Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar: So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud, Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed, Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head.

Anthony Van Dyck 1618 Christ Carrying The Cross, oil on panel, Sint-Pauluskerk, Antwerp