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old acquaintance well renew
Prospero had One Caliban & I have Two
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An old maid early eer I knew
Ought but the love that on me grew
And now Im coverd oer & oer
And wish that I had been a Whore
O I cannot cannot find
The undaunted courage of a Virgin Mind
For Early I in love was crost
Before my flower of...You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
But maybe you're only a Johnnie[1]
And don't know a horse from a hoe?
Well, well, don't get angry...On a Columnar Self —
How ample to rely
In Tumult — or Extremity —
How good the Certainty
That Lever cannot pry —
And Wedge cannot divide
Conviction — That Granitic Base —
Though None be on our Side —
Suffice Us — for a Crowd —
Ourself — and Rectitude —...(recovering from an Indisposition)
Narcissus (as Ovid informs us) expir'd,
Consum'd by the flames his own beauty had fir'd;
But N---o (who like him is charm'd with his face,
And sighs for his other fair-self in the glass)
Loves to greater excess than Narcissus---for why?
He loves himself too much...CORINNA'S judgment do not less admire,
That she for Oulus shows a gen'rous fire;
Lucretia toying thus had been a fool,
But wiser Helen might have us'd the tool.
Since Oulus for one use alone is fit,
With charity judge of Corinna's wit.
I know not if thy noble worth
My country's annals claim,
For in her brief, bright history
I have not read thy name.
I know not if thou e'er didst live;
Save in the vivid thought
Of him who chronicled thy life,...I strive in vain those features to restore
To Memory's faded tablets, which on me,
From the mute ivory, beam so lovingly,
And to recall their living light once more.
In vain I strive to pierce that veil of years,
And turn away all blinded with my tears....Fresh, through the mist of ages past,
Thou risest on our view,
As when from Judah's waving fields,
Thy footsteps brushed the dew.
Yet 'tis not for thy beauty's sake
We thus remember thee;
Although a chieftain's captive...