If I had a shiny gun, I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brain… Of the folk who give me pains; Or had I some poison gas,

Helen of Troy had a wandering gla… Sappho’s restriction was only the… Ninon was ever the chatter of Fra… But oh, what a good girl am I!

The Lives and Times of John Keat… Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron Byron and Shelley and Keats Were a trio of Lyrical treats.

Hope it was that tutored me, And Love that taught me more; And now I learn at Sorrow’s knee The self-same lore.

Roses, rooted warm in earth, Bud in rhyme, another age; Lilies know a ghostly birth Strewn along a patterned page; Golden lad and chimbley sweep

Let another cross his way– She’s the one will do the weeping! Little need I fear he’ll stray Since I have his heart in keeping… Let another hail him dear–

Love has gone a-rocketing. That is not the worst; I could do without the thing, And not be the first. Joy has gone the way it came.

Such glorious faith as fills your… Dear little friend of mine, I nev… All-innocent are you, and yet all-… (For Heaven’s sake, stop worrying… You look about, and all you see is…

This, no song of an ingénue, This, no ballad of innocence; This, the rhyme of a lady who Followed ever her natural bents. This, a solo of sapience,

And let her loves, when she is dea… Write this above her bones: “No more she lives to give us brea… Who asked her only stones.”

There was a rose that faded young; I saw its shattered beauty hung Upon a broken stem. I heard them say, “What need to c… With roses budding everywhere?”

Maidens, gather not the yew, Leave the glossy myrtle sleeping; Any lad was born untrue, Never a one is fit your weeping. Pretty dears, your tumult cease;

If it shine or if it rain, Little will I care or know. Days, like drops upon a pane, Slip, and join, and go. At my door’s another lad;

Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed– I think they would be better dead.

There’s a place I know where the… And wayward vines go roaming, Where the lilacs nod, and a marble… Is pale, in scented gloaming. And at sunset there comes a lady f…