Epigraphy

A Ballad Of John Silver

By John Masefield

We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull,

And we flew the pretty colours of the cross-bones and the skull;

We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore,

And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore.

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,

We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;

It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored,

But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.

Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains,

And the paint-work all was spatter-dashed with other people's brains,

She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank,

And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank.

O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop)

We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken-coop;

Then, having washed the blood away, we'd little else to do

Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to.

O! the fiddle on the fo'c's'le, and the slapping naked soles,

And the genial "Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!"

With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead,

And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red.

Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played,

All have since been put a stop-to by the naughty Board of Trade;

The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest,

A little south the sunset in the Islands of the Blest.

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

By Robert Lee Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there's some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ulysses

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dulce et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares, we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clancy Of The Overflow

By Banjo Paterson

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
`Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

Then look for me by moonlight,

Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;

And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,

When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,

A red-coat troop came marching—

Marching—marching—

King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.

But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

There was death at every window;

And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.

They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!

“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

Watch for me by moonlight;

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years

Till, now, on the stroke of...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ironic Poem About Prostitution

By George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

When I was young and had no sense

In far-off Mandalay

I lost my heart to a Burmese girl

As lovely as the day.

Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,

Her teeth were ivory;

I said, 'for twenty silver pieces,

Maiden, sleep with me'.

She looked at me, so pure, so sad,

The loveliest thing alive,

And in her lisping, virgin voice,

Stood out for twenty-five.

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despair

By H. P. Lovecraft

O’er the midnight moorlands crying,

Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,

In the night-wind madly flying,

Hellish forms with streaming hair;

In the barren branches creaking,

By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,

Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;

Damn’d daemons of despair.

Once, I think I half remember,

Ere the grey skies of November

Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,

Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;

Skies that now are dark were beaming,

Gold and azure, splendid seeming

Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—

Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

But the stream of Time, swift flowing,

Brings the torment of half-knowing—

Dimly rushing, blindly going

Past the never-trodden lea;

And the voyager, repining,

Sees the wicked death-fires shining,

Hears the wicked petrel’s whining

As he helpless drifts to sea.

Evil wings in ether beating;

Vultures at the spirit eating;

Things unseen forever fleeting

Black against the leering sky.

Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,

Clawing fiends of future sadness,

Mingle in a cloud of madness

Ever on the soul to lie.

Thus the living, lone and sobbing,

In the throes of anguish throbbing,

With the loathsome Furies robbing

Night and noon of peace and rest.

But beyond the groans and grating

Of abhorrent Life, is waiting

Sweet Oblivion, culminating

All the years of fruitless quest.

Find us online at thatsnotcanon.com/epigraphy

Subscribe to us on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY, RADIOPUBLIC or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.