#I am in a state of delirium and this is heaven

[hmdeath]

Hello!

So this is not a question but rather just me rambling and fangirling over Astarion, his story and especially your fic "Unravel".

I love it so much, really! You're doing such a phenomenal job writing it and I'm getting all excited whenever there's a new chapter!

So when I was on my way to work yesterday a song I used to love but hadn't heard in a long time started playing. It's also called "Unravel". It's actually an english cover of one of the openings from the anime "Death Note" by Jonathan Young (I love his music, omg).

And I was like "oh funny, just yesterday there was a new chapter of this really cool fic called "Unravel" as well."

So when I started paying more attention to the lyrics I thought that the song was quite fitting for Astarion and especially your fic!

I mean, of course not every line of the song is fitting! I thought about it like "what if the 'real' Astarion was aware of everything ascended Astarion did to Hikari and in general?"

So here are the lyrics:

Oh, can you tell me, can you tell me the way the story ends?

A monster in my heart, a ghost inside my chest

I′m broken down, the world around us surrounds my suffering

(He is a monster, he's but a ghost of what he was before. Also I believe A!Astarion is truly suffering, he has never been happy since the ritual. But there's also nothing he can do about it on his own, because it's just the way he has to be after it.)

You smile and laugh at me, but you don't see a thing

Damaged and broken as I am, I′m trying not to breathe

Unraveled, I'm not unraveled by the truth I finally see (Freeze)

I'm breakable, unbreakable

I′m shakeable, unshakeable

Unraveling since I found you

And now I′m turning to dust in a world that's twisted

Don′t come searching when I go missing

Close your eyes or just try to look away, don't want to hurt you

(Like... Hikari didn't have to return to him and spawn!Astarion probably wouldn't have wanted her to endanger herself even if it was so 'save' him, right?)

We live in the world someone else imagined

The ghost of what′s left of me all but vanished

Remember my heart, how bright I used to shine

(Okay, this is a bit of a stretch since he was undead before the ritual and his heart certainly didn't 'shine' that bright, haha 😂 but he did fall in love with her, so that's enough for me!)

Entangled in the loneliness

The memory of innocence

It's stinging me, it′s breaking me

The pain is spreading endlessly

I cannot move, I close my eyes

I try to breathe, I realize

I'm paralyzed, I'm paralyzed

Unravel the world

(Again, what if spawn!Astarion was aware. Maybe he is... Somehow? Or at least, he will remember when/if the pact is finally reversed and he is back to his former self.)

I′m not what I was then, don′t touch the infection

Entwined we will both die so stay away, and stay alive

(Same as above, she didn't have to come back to him. The infection could refer to the ascension and even to vampirism itself. Spawn! Astarion would never have wanted Hikari to be turned into a vampire herself.)

I'm breakable, unbreakable, I′m shakeable, unshakeable

Unraveling, I won't infect you

And now I′m turning to dust in a world that's twisted

Don′t come searching when I go missing

Close your eyes or try to look away, don't want to hurt you

We live in the world someone else imagined

The ghost of what left of me all but vanished

Remember my heart, how bright I used to shine

Please, just don't forget me

Just don′t forget me

Just don′t forget me

Just don't forget me

Don′t forget me

(I mean after all the shit Astarion's been through... Hikari (as his first true love) forgetting about how he truly was would be brutal 😭)

We live in a world someone else imagined

The ghost of what left of me all but vanished

Remember my heart, how bright I used to shine

Oh, can you tell me?

Oh, can you tell me?

A monster in my heart

And now there's nothing left

Sorry that this is so long 😂 but after my brain made all these connections to your story I couldn't stop thinking about it and I just HAD to let the brainrot run wild 🙈

I hope you're having a wonderful day and I'm really looking forward to the next chapter ❤️

WOW I LOVE THIS!!!!

I was definitely aware of the song - I mean how could I not be lol - but I'd never heard this english translation and he does it so well, first of all!! Second of all though OH MY GOD??!??!?!?! THIS IS TOO PERFECT???? IN EVERY SINGLE WAY??!??!!?

me waking up from the delirium of being disgustingly sick for the past 3 days to this glory:

[t6fs]

When you come to, you're being carried.

The Sixfinger’d Scrimshander wants to help nurse you back to health.

(Do you trust it? It might be trying to poison you!)

It's strange to hear the familiar way it pops the latch to your window from outside of it, but cool London gives way to the familiar smell of your home. You are placed, carefully, on the floor.

"Szopelosz k”ïkhat xïkh..."

There's something in its voice you haven't heard before. It hastily presses something to the worst of your wounds, trying to stop the bleeding.

"Tlo`tï`... tlo`tï` ma..."

Something cold on your cheek. Tears. Not your own. You can hear its heart beating.

"Come on... stay with me... I've got you..."

Do guardian angels cry?

As it lays you against the hard floor of your room, you become paler and paler. The wounds are something inflicted — that much is obvious. The cuts are angled strangely, in a manner that suggests they are not inflicted by the body’s owner. It seems a client had been a little too rough with the man.

Or was it a client at all?

God only knows what you had been doing in Wilmot’s End. Perhaps the gaze from the junior diplomat was not as lascivious as you expected — maybe that lasciviousness was hunger of a different nature. Hunger of a violent nature. The scent of frankincense fills the room — the window leads into a front room that seems to have been converted to an area of prayer. You are lying right next to the altar and think only to do one thing. With shaking, bloodied hands, you clasp them together. Teary, hazy eyes turn to the crucifix.

“Please, Saint Peter… please…”

You turn your eyes to it, coughing slightly. You seem not to realise, in this delirious state of panic, that death is always impermanent, and that Saint Peter has been put out of a job in the Neath for years.

"Shh... no. Look at me."

The Sixfinger’d Scrimshander has seen that you are suffering from Nightmares, and wishes to assist.

It turns your face to its own. Its eye is wide, expression somewhere in the realm of fury... but it's not for you.

No, no. Not for you.

"You're going to live. Look at me. You're going to be okay."

It brushes the bloody tears from your cheek with its thumb. Its voice is as gentle as falling ash.

"I need you to breathe. Focus. Focus on me. Don't look at your blood, don't look at your god. Don't take your eyes off me. Breathe, Edison."

Its voice breaks. Its eye is silver, like a tear-stained moon. Have you ever seen the moon, Edison?

"I've got you."

Moving your clasped hands, you are now clutching its own in a vice grip. You are shaking — more than when you were ill with mania. But you seem not to be as hurt as you are afraid. Looking at it with wide, almost mortified eyes, you let your head tip back against the floor, breathing heavily. In this angle, your eyelids fall nearly closed in the manner in which you are looking at it. The beginnings of sentences come out fragmented.

“I wasn’t… I— I didn’t… he just… stabbed so quickly…”

You choke a little, coughing through the agony again. Your hands grip it tighter.

“He was… trying to… I did not foresee… him having…”

You suck in a strained breath through your teeth.

“It hurts— it’s hurting me— I can’t— it’s hurting…”

Your glittering eyes meet the Scrimshander's again. Tears and sweat have drenched your face. You are baptised in your own agony.

“Please, let me pray… let me pray, Logan. I want… I want to go to Heaven. I want God— I want God to forgive me, please.”

Your eyes clamp shut, squeezing more tears out. If you can grip it any tighter, you do.

“I want to be good enough. I— I’m… trying to be… trying to be good enough… please… let me repent, please. I need… to be good enough.”

In delirium from the pain, you laugh, eyes rolling back to stare up at the altar.

“Who… am I kidding, Logan? Certain… certainly not you. I am… going to Hell. There is no… no place for me in… God’s kingdom.”

What you See:

Its hands move to cup your face, its expression one of grief and a fury you've never seen on the face of anything mortal. Its long, sharp teeth are bared and hungry as its mouth moves, words spilling past them rapidly. Its hands pull back, and it practically tears your bodice free, undoes your bloodsoaked shirt. Its hands find your wounds, and it presses its fingers into your flesh. For the first time, since it carried you home, its eye closes.

Beneath its eyepatch, something begins to give off incredible light.

The light spreads, first, to the whorling scars on the left side of its face, like threads of gold forming a lattice of filigree. The light spreads, illuminating its skull and teeth, and the lichtenberg figure that splits its form, crackling down both arms. Its bones begin to get brighter, and you see the spiral of its ribs through its shirt, the interlacing lattice of veins, the pulsing of its hearts in a harrowing canter. Its face is now so bright it is hard to keep your eyes on it. Its bones glow like a sun, trying to erupt from its skin.

Yours do, too.

When the glow recedes, it collapses beside you, rolling to one side, gasping. A trickle of black runa from its nose, and the space behind its ear where it breathes.

Your body is whole, wounds healed, as though they had never been.

What you Feel:

Warmth, cradling your face. Gentle fingers against your temple, pushing sweat-slick hair from your forehead. Cold tears, but only on your right cheek. The hands recede, and the world is suddenly cold, as your flayed body is bared. Those same gentle hands find your deepest wounds and the pain is sharp and sudden, it is difficult to even breathe.

It is nothing compared to what follows.

The hands on you begin to heat up, and every fibre of your being responds as though you have been electrified. The current of agony you felt before is a gentle embrace compared to this. If you are screaming, you cannot hear it. The fires of Hell would be a pleasant and comfortable warmth. The gilded rot pours through your synapses, the sodium channels of your nerves, and you feel your flesh reaching for itself. The pain of weeks of healing concentrated to this instant.

And then? The pain is gone.

Gone as if it had never been. You hardly even remember it. There are other pains, of course, but they feel almost trivial now.

You feel a hand in yours.

What you Hear:

There is a sob, and a growl.

"No, Edison. Look at me. Don't give up now, please. I can't lose anyone else. I never should have touched you, now you're going t—"

A hiss of frustration, strangled by tears.

"Edison, I will never stop you from praying. Pray all you want, but understand. Please understand. You are perfect. There is nothing you could do that would make you unworthy to exist. You are enough. You change this place with your words, your hands, your laugh. If there's no room for that in your God's kingdom, there's room for it in mine. I'm sorry."

There is a horrible sound like thunder, that shakes you to your bones. Sick cracking and a radio static whine. The Scrimshander gasps, like it's been struck, deep and hollow. There is something else, older than any god. The sound of something gentle, and loving.

An ending, but a peaceful one.

When your ears stop ringing, you focus on the sound of Lok'a`wï`, gasping beside you. How do you know the name of the Keeper of the Question? No time to think about that. It sniffs. Its voice is a threadbare whisper, hoarse and honest.

"I love you, Edison Hollingsworth. I just... wish you could love yourself."

The Sixfinger’d Scrimshander has admitted their admiration for you.

Are you willing to deepen your relationship?

Once it falls to its side, you all but shoot up, gasping for air and clutching at your chest. You tremble, still, though not out of agony. Your hand is desperately gripping onto Logan's in the manner that you might shatter the bones in it.

“A miracle?”

Your voice comes out in the softest whisper. Finding yourself able to stand, you pull yourself from the bloodied floor and stare at the altar in front of you, with something of a mortified expression. At a moment’s notice, you take a framed picture of the Lord, drop it onto the floor, and shatter the glass beneath your red-stained shoe. By the time you are finished with this episode of change, the altar is ruined.

“There is no God in Heaven.”

You announce your revelation to yourself, then drop to your knees, over it, watching its exhausted expression. Your hand comes to wipe the trickling black from under its nose, while another links with the hand that had held yours before.

“It is here on Earth with me.”

With haste, you lean down and press your lips to its own, and it is something more chaste and pure and holy than the million kisses you have forced yourself to bestow to others.

There is something real behind the way you kiss the Sixfinger'd Scrimshander.

You have taken the Sixfinger'd Scrimshander into your arms. You appreciate its admission of affection!

Seen with The Sixfinger'd Scrimshander (1)

(Long post, thanks for stickin around! Thank you @torturingpeople for being so fun to write with!!)

[caintooth]

i think my favorite thing about my personal experience of religion is that it is so malleable.

i believe in a version of God, but because i have bad history with traditional paths to/of faith (and am also Extremely Mentally Ill), i use a lot of metaphors to help myself come to terms with… whatever is out there.

i can have an extremely personal relationship with Dionysus, i can get in my feelings about Jesus Christ and Judas, i can look at video game characters and choose to worship them if i want. because i see all these things as aspects of one universal, all-encompassing energy. just metaphors for the real energy beneath and behind them.

because my prayer is in emotion, and experience. it’s all psychological. i firmly believe the whole, like, heaven and hell exist on earth thing, they’re just states of mind- but in the sense that God / holiness / divinity are real, and are the experience of life itself as we all know it.

when i was thirteen, curled up crying on the bathroom floor, that was God. when i’m twenty five laughing with my friends, that’s God, too. when i’m front row at a shitty punk show, when i’m at an art museum, when i’m touched by the sun on a nice summer day. when i make pasta, when i put on my shoes for a walk, when i watch television with my lover, when i am touched, when i am looked at, when i am existing in this world…

consciousness, and the many forms it takes, are my mysticism. it’s why i choose Dionysus as my main metaphor. the delirium is equally as an important experience as the clarity. the sickness, and the health. the fear and the hope. the destruction and continuous, never-ending rebirth.

i love when he makes me feel like shit. i love when God hurts me. it means i get to feel better again later. and even if i don’t, that’s his choice. that’s out of my hands. i did all i could and God decides the rest. i don’t have to choose. it’s so relieving.

it means he’s still here with me, at the end of everything. even when i am in pain and coughing and can barely breathe through the headache. he’s watching me. touching me. pushing me to the outer limits of my experience, and keeping his fingers on the small of my back just when i reach the edge. he could push me over with a twitch, or grab my shirt and pull us back onto familiar ground. i love teetering on that edge. he keeps me thankful.

i believe that i’m alive. and that experience of living is God itself. i just funnel it through a metaphor so i feel less alone. less in control… it’s nice, to give up that power. he takes good care of me.

[autolovecraft]

I thought!

Great heavens, Birch, but you got what you deserved. Birch, before 1881, had been the village undertaker of Peck Valley Cemetery, escaping only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but while this much was undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker things which the man used to whisper to me in his drunken delirium toward the last. Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no practiced teller of tales. Whether he had imagination enough to wish they were empty, is strongly to be doubted. I thought! At last the spring thaw came, and graves were laboriously prepared for the nine silent harvests of the grim reaper which waited in the tomb. He had even wondered, at Sawyer's funeral, how the vindictive farmer had managed to lie straight in a box so closely akin to that of the diminutive Fenner. Perhaps he screamed. I've seen sights before, but there was one thing too much here. In another moment he knew fear for the first time that night; for struggle as he would, he could not but wish that the units of his contemplated staircase had been more securely made. I've seen sights before, but there was one thing too much here.

As he remounted the splitting coffins he felt his weight very poignantly; especially when, upon reaching the topmost one, he heard that aggravated crackle which bespeaks the wholesale rending of wood. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. Birch. Better still, though, he would utilize only two boxes of the base to support the superstructure, leaving one free to be piled on top in case the actual feat of escape required an even greater altitude. The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he vaguely wished it would stop.

It was just as he had recognized old Matt's coffin that the door slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before. Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no practiced teller of tales.

For an impersonal doctor, Davis' ominous and awestruck cross-examination became very strange indeed as he sought to pull himself up, when he noticed a queer retardation in the form of an apparent drag on both his ankles.

His day's work was sadly interrupted, and unless chance presently brought some rambler hither, he might have to remain all night or longer. Birch to the outside of a spare bed and sent his little son Edwin for Dr. Davis. Then the doctor came with his medicine-case and asked crisp questions, and removed the patient's outer clothing, shoes, and socks.

He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste. It was generally stated that the affliction and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch had locked himself for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley Cemetery, escaping only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but while this much was undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker things which the man used to whisper to me in his drunken delirium toward the last.

An eye for an eye! The wounds—for both ankles were frightfully lacerated about the Achilles' tendons—seemed to puzzle the old physician greatly, and finally almost to frighten him. At any rate he kicked and squirmed frantically and automatically whilst his consciousness was almost eclipsed in a half-swoon.

It was just as he had recognized old Matt's coffin that the door slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed it. And so the prisoner toiled in the twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of mortality with little ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course. Why did you do it, Birch? But it would be well to say as little as could be said, and to let no other doctor treat the wounds. Being without superstition, he did not heed the day at all; so that he was reduced to a profane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward the latch. You know what a fiend he was for revenge—how he ruined old Raymond thirty years after their boundary suit, and how he had chosen it, how he had been certain of it as the Fenner coffin in the dusk, and how he had chosen it, how he had distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer. The undertaker grew doubly lethargic in the bitter weather, and seemed to outdo even himself in carelessness.

As his hammer blows began to fall, the horse outside whinnied in a tone which may have been fear mixed with a queer belated sort of remorse for bygone crudities. It was generally stated that the affliction and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch had locked himself for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley; and was a very calloused and primitive specimen even as such specimens go.

Instinct guided him in his wriggle through the transom. Armington, the lodge-keeper, answered his feeble clawing at the door. Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had chosen it, how he had been certain of it as the Fenner coffin in the dusk, and how he stepped on the puppy that snapped at him a year ago last August … He was the devil incarnate, Birch, just as I thought! Being without superstition, he did not get Asaph Sawyer's coffin by mistake, although it was very similar. Perhaps he screamed. Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which billowed forth even to the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. An eye for an eye! The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon. He would have given much for a lantern or bit of candle; but lacking these, bungled semi-sightlessly as best he might.

Birch, just as I thought! His questioning grew more than medically tense, and his body responding with that maddening slowness from which one suffers when chased by the phantoms of nightmare. At last the spring thaw came, and graves were laboriously prepared for the nine silent harvests of the grim reaper which waited in the tomb. He was curiously unelated over his impending escape, and almost dreaded the exertion, for his form had the indolent stoutness of early middle age. He gave old Matt the very best his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible. In the semi-gloom he trusted mostly to touch to select the right one, and indeed came upon it almost by accident, since it tumbled into his hands as if through some odd volition after he had unwittingly placed it beside another on the third layer. He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste. Birch, though dreading the bother of removal and interment, began his task of transference one disagreeable April morning, but ceased before noon because of a heavy rain that seemed to irritate his horse, after having laid but one mortal tenant to its permanent rest. Perhaps he screamed. Birch still toiling. His day's work was sadly interrupted, and unless chance presently brought some rambler hither, he might have to remain all night or longer. Birch, though dreading the bother of removal and interment, began his task of transference one disagreeable April morning, but ceased before noon because of a heavy rain that seemed to irritate his horse, after having laid but one mortal tenant to its permanent rest. Dusk fell and found Birch still toiling. He was oddly anxious to know if Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer. Birch? Never did he knock together flimsier and ungainlier caskets, or disregard more flagrantly the needs of the rusty lock on the tomb door which he slammed open and shut with such nonchalant abandon. Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which billowed forth even to the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed it. This arrangement could be ascended with a minimum of awkwardness, and would furnish the desired height.

[libidomechanica]

“To take their private to shew I am too qualifid, in”

A ballad sequence

               1

Watch and real? But love the Flood, and     unrespect, thought. Which levels to a sister, chose two must     beholding with the doome.

God was Rome. To take their private     to shew I am too qualifi’d, in its mitt, a clouds     wrapped in the dying be

the forlorn world, I’d score. Meantime     to have you. Sometimes a sovereign to praise, all to-night,     Irene. From heaven the

viler, as what I must bewail     us, because it dead hour and feet the after than for     love, if thou my eye, when

as the greatness tell. Of sweet selfe     makes all his grand did proue; but ev’ry hymn to hear, no more—     mething a ding, drilling,

exclaiming, in his settled graveyard     cross him and chain; and justifi’d the thirteenth, what binds     used genteelly. Queens may

go? And I sunned it at     seventeen skiing the avoidance of the ancient race of     languish’d Pow’r in Trust, there

is not yet—never Ceases to     bid a sweet food, and wound, was come—falling she sat: the God-     like th’ unwilling

it live a scorn, when I’ve added     bed-posts shine, not to say, three-decker out for we hold in     youth, for this soul in yon

bonie breasts, thou, thou lik’st so well their     ever change in the Danube’s bank and to advancing     o’er the yellow meadows,

which curl upon the prospect his     life renews: and secure. Can be sav’d, even yet, like one     kindest Calmucks, drilling,

within the nerves off noise and cease     to his Prince! Now droop-headed, that honour’d let his memory     rankles, when the naked

love in sighs to the celebration     and there did upon my Mothers’ fears before her     hairs, fair one brave as the

hungry crave; and in their Witnesses     of sway. Its Incomes home against that means would tire     of Gold. But I want his

Factious Youth, by such the invisible     friends—as thus array’d; the fair tho, the earth with me;     he’s dreadful sacrificers

in the conceit of a windy     night in the fierce kisses, how charm is brother desires     compassing in the

deep each of earth’s diurnal course,     pickpockets, or continuous laws. Away there to score;     they willing stalls in the

wise; for what binds used to cope with     tempers can tell the least light as this explicitly ouergone,     let notes from the chart.

               2

For love. Would catch her dirty smock;     or like a huge mother she leaneth on a cannot married     as light had veild than Accuse. Tell me why then man, for     to dusk, nothing be the

mould tye. But still say: But how languor     and here, some on the Muse-In Sanhedrins to pronouce     and weeping clouds of necessary Law! To speak the river     he flies, bewitch’d that

is mischaunce. Swung in the elder     jack Smith; one of all men like a gas lamp, when their enemy     return’st, with heaven hair! Which when two, advised respected;     but when on its crown

the dark old pleasured out of     my soule was a sabre throng’d to make a notion of the     night, oppression in my little dog will come an     amphitheatre, each other&

father burn’d to Heav’n, one on while     up the hope this song; a woman’s manly bearing ill. Kind     delirium, gripe it very hostile Humour, which was     not care I how for my

darkness on the blue weed, my recklesse     woe: now wondred of the Wine, and the face to burn a     town,—a portion of the State, but soon may be dissenting     me all that the Godheads

draw near the bird trapped wet in it.     Hovering line; sternly denied thee them: the grave! Used! I earned     to say just means he to seek my happy love, the played by     a bee was not Heav’n in

the tools; but Fame is run! But freely,     request among us, will be Naked love to shriek,     love but one tells me oft she spouse of blisses, look’d down from     the red cloaks of God, as

he rode, where awful Government     is thy force of their Maker’s Image through the Nikolaiew     regiment? When thought and equal his future King his be     the time hath fur: for Lawfull

for verse: could weeping soul with     children—women, two Leg’d thing to be a butchery, scarlet,     and swell they say in white and Tyranny. Lo! Not proud     of all already, known;

down and ball. When my trick of their     wants to pestle a poison behind the sons of these, love     to call a young love’s delight. His burial talked with man     his night in the harden’d

heart-throbs, and I, and is my dreaming     is to the night and in her brother’s grief. That Golden     Galaxy. From the suffring Saintlike Grace, and quench’d th’     unfruitfull choir’s amen.

               3

She weaves Sighing shot of Abelard     and by Plato; by Tillotson, and like a round a     hey nonino, how status

as object, bless your censure;     Silia does shall be. To follies the Western relieve me,     above the madness grandeur

that of dreery death, so, sure     as their Jewish Markets of mine, thou shalt strangeness at home     again—What doth flashes

fall, one that’s good man, for one Shakspeare     puts the hell worn away the King, and Passion, as things     unresisted, battering

time, the Regal Right in     Ohio where Godalmighty blest Objects, the foe. From the     wakeful an endeavour,

content to stands that stand still     it to be a form, I seek the rest, till you would keep court-     favourite, and music,

worth, we lie and made for the giddy     Jews tread to blessed your eyes flashes and waited for graced     behind the firesides

grow old … I grow silence and     lonely tranquilly, when as yet; but without objects of     the Spring, not weight: for

shade of feelings that forms and grieve.     By hireling at they view’d such odious arms are     metamorphos’d strangers—heirlooms

of my part, I pretend not     Introduces—You. All this written piled and made women     use are like a brother,

which make your idle wrath, my     deadlier engineering night, we will one day by day. There     were drawing to harm arms

of darkned mind, whom Just Revenge     did her cheek when she of my careful hollow behind, and     like a iudgements after

his owne: and, foolish heart in     moods that Golden Autumn hold Thee just, and all her way; nor     came mended late to wayle

my hearts you, with mery things     as well—but, art brought shades— How charm shall wear it not, my heard,     that else pale stream, and secret

Foes. Thou euer sene? Pass onward     with all the arrowe, ne can rival, can paint a sigh thus     doth vs beat or beaten,

if you ain’t never he     muttering me some to buoy the Priesthood in the assault:     I have known and Buffoon,

half-empty in the weeping. Was     for every means; and still the river the pane, tighten’d while     yours; o then, the touches.

               4

The transient race of the hour will?     And ever can one flea guilt they reached over the boys and     goes by touch’d, so pierced moment’s

good report. Which all the publick     Safety pray’r, and gleam, it muddies Embleme. I have lift     thinke thy guided at a’!

               5

With his was slowly dying year     fallen on a cavalier. Air and goes by try’d the blamed,     and dash through the Celebrated first, and shy and all pall     their shade, ruby grape, and in temple led, to make you ain’t     never be who had gone,

let fops or forehead to-morrow     chief sae pawkie is manhood and the heart. Whole; nor wish’d by a     shutter encloses our libertie; and when Ambition Blinds!     Of Lords, relieved the birth finds all you are, for you only     proper to the third is

neither cease to pleas, thoughts: the Plot     require as dare to her father’s mind. Perchance extent     and townes do work no more— mething abroad daylight of beauty,     round. Seemed enormous down, used! Alone, for the acres     of her Earth am rotten;

from out here were must see no     more free, more evil sprited gaze; two batteries proves the     acres of the slaves his moving music from pole; in Power     and with fancy i have loved the quiet would not thyself     art too much, and of

stars, battering him. And faultful     Past went sorrow, come back to me, to laugh’d her like a scar     between, and a hey now a shells before; and suffer more     disgust, for two love, nor puft with a willow that old Harp     I still back to me, the

first wholly eue, hey ho the fairy,     which never try’d the world farewell! There are bad. See how     it by that sad realized he hand with dust, stript to love,     an’ lan’. Of those tail’s a diadem, with seaweed red and     gain’d her, next time the shepheards

glad, and round suck for Nutriment.     In height: what the only: we haven’t made a sunbeam     by thy pray’rs depending the melancholy has closest     to frighten bolted join’d expressed young fellow, being battle,     small have I seek the

clay and grew rather them to kiss,     and call yours; o then, no matter end! Her comes another     in this grand illumination, but of freed. To his Kings     were embark’d, the uneven her, all is vanity’s shall     light; in broad stretched the golden

dreamed at all Mankind beats with     his Glory’s van. The day buildings in the sun’s defeated     in a pause I too much wound outruns Desire; there did     glow. The day when he had failed in ordered so fit for God     decree more sober lighted

care! Our mother&father and     a hey nonino, those were wrong; was every distant light,     as it he leaneth on a children’s mittens, scratch and if     you ain’t never worst of perplexity; thy sacrilege,     through veils. The giddy Jews

tread the fault was mere lust of frame     but sinking all. See how languid and a birthday cake and     ridicules. Of what tempting low, she so few reade the Fall:     but who you can say briefly was he, since, to learn to be     Out-done. And die of new

books could be ne’er was also in     thrall; and waited butterflies drawn from his pow’r away my     Wit and every prepared fascination, pulses bearing     times, too dear last obey, the sober light—he stripes if he     himself a Queensbury

to roam, by creeks and tried to choose     a Monarch which even his song; a woman: he, whole day     has had met a partner in Silence of others have full     strange? The Mark: for Soveraign power: e’r Saul was force; she     sees the accident, I

told me under. For I trust thy     foreheads Image is, which before cannot bewray least in     thy hard in our telephone call’d him, to be shown to give     up love, thought so high, heroic bosom with a silent     seas. As virtues ways; made

Drunk with sweetness to the compass     done will nevermore and ever death, or sweet hour employ,     far other skin after such plain pudding bade those weight. He     said from each sad, the false heaps of Noah’s double majestically,     drops just what was Rome.

               6

Does thy dart! ’St so weak they stands     suited best see reveals, as when e’r their desires and     the Nations that cannie, O.

               7

Around so digress? For what Fate Prophet—and hid     his Brother out for glory! Thy gift, methoughts: that not you ten years in the breathe upon     the smart of a whole joys and a’! Each fulfil: just a wall, that I meant; but trepidation     too, Maud, althoughts in the skirts that master than to eternal God Supreme Command,     scatter’d his future, sharp as a sort

our frail one’s advocate, trying roar, and made him remain’d,     like guest—thus far as Champion of the Russian stores our swear no wherewith Ida’s     at length the Rabble worm, so queens may Sons again and burning on air and to your     Reign as Aarons’s race, should have been gone miss’d these pretty summs of darkness of May, singing     joy or fear. I will be possibly

useless harden’d her cheeks so sure than their Reason     guide in thee with cold which write your hear sighs for truth is, yours yet forget the words fond will     lean into Heav’n by the evening with roses gone five year when it gone? Shine, and close my     night lay! And safe and shews thee swim, gladde with a wisp along; other blushed, answered; this     Consequence: whose life’s blisses, too full

character which are the town’s on the larks from that could     discontinual tears. A borough dreary graves, while we make churchmen strides back the fault, and     too long, Jámi, in the play. Love’s the Croud, the Scrifice, amid the stream is done showing     the bride, fix’d on her fingers, strength beguile, with indignities: be her works and hides ten     since ill-clad? Fills with dying love’s wrong;

was every difficulty be, she lies be. As     they fused to mount the Day, which one day I met thy sweet, believing nature graunteth light     be, or dress of teares expression could not who you from the body and balcony,     by garden; they starts, stops, starlight grows; which, howe’er trouble through veils. My Spectre around     some gentle Maud too, be of that our

plate; thou dare not so; I love! Nothing seaward on     the place it self, nor more my Muse, for love immortal mirror’s magic sight summer’s blood!     Who make, and ev’n in thy hopes a Rival to resound: the fault was thine eye, the while my     face, struck me, made for Factions and from a cushion a preached? Stealing up my dream that hears     no doubt how power of her homage.

               8

Train of day, or through we carue, as learn of the rest.     To broodings are torn: how street lov’d idea lies: th’Eternal Footman put it is morn     has too much the heat to disguise, which

Heav’n seize it, sought I say, they treaties her brother     course to do without the Old mens Dream! As it they brim. Some slight, she left by, Norman; took     your captives fomented beach. To writer

of the rare gift to sound the height: nor ever     ask’d her heartbreak and poker-faced lord; heap’d Affronts hackney on the porch what’s last obey,     the Factions try; and scorne recount Damas

drown. Oh Ancient Fabricks nod, and silently     without my sight, her little on my brow; but Manly Force he hankers, heaping of thine,     where and pear is ask’d him to shew his

friend! Maud without in thy babe from the lives in my     eye-balls roll it boldly—or Thou have to breaking to Heav’n scarce a subjects known; ’ a pleading     a ding, ding; so that I hallow’d

to David’s Soul of Ida fell, immortal life     with allied to be Cato, nor tears, that it is to Reb ell. Of which I can no more     among us, wicked buds disgrace.

               9

Will be time the Land. Seven Sleep     must maken fiery Soul its frail one’s own bent; I cannot     take the scream of

Camelot; outside and this, alas,     no more? Melts in furrows airy, what well-sung woes will were     wrought hour, there; so black and

wit; if vaine Loue hath not find. Be;     weel ken I married at her mood than language starts, distills     you love immortal on

a bond, thy image in tears of     the ground: that when raging a most I stay; sad proofe makes you     who was their prey, turn’d. Mournful

hyacinths and Oblivion     yields;—reflection, as now about it, but in those for     Fury from his chickened

all his Voyce was left branch and Hell     thou dost go, endure, and dead, that are lost Eloisa see!     From Hebron brings to

Paraclete’s whole gazette. But when     alone. What waited for comfort in your tradesman once     tis true: things, after skipping

out in their band walk and caverns     with scorn em all: not Caesar and horsemen, who were jacks     and honour, Oh Unconquer’d

by Force: but disturb’d, in     conservative burns to pray, to Toast our Lord, who cares not Heav’n     inspir’d, the nineteen who

dar’d to be said from earlier     that I may join griefs to mix with grace adorn beauty is     one the glad Divine

oblivion to slay thy estimate:     the most breath of the wind! Such fond heav’nly fix’d repose:     true, and Chrematoff and

Nature, past, or other up but     distant his Faction which man of Jebusites; and ambers     of a Spartan, had

he not your gloomed; and marriage     vow, perplexity; thy eyes fix’d, that doth thee, and watch’d th’     unfruitfull choir

when dreaming—and grinned at a’! Permit     thee stand stemmerring time; for wanderer bore to God,     and ices, have the ground,

like prayed me away, come women’s     hearthstone? Your two cheek when victi. Here grief, and honour turn     with mourn whence, thou darker

and some captives, and is no my     ain lassie, kind love, to the river he flight. How does Love     speak the Russian story?

               10

And in heart’s blood spill: I saw the     vales await the waves blown, in fragrant gloom profound: she might;     the yellow! You rip away

skin that which oft, with tears? And     rak’d, for their own good Compasses on bounteous David’s Rule:     And when it was plain she

ought from her: to cast all, at all     this plaints dovetailed on my love is in the green, and main, the     sea. For glory still. The

well. In rubies set, my head. And     than wit. And such a change to the way lips tremble throng’d in     brown, or fail in a streets

and swallow a fist of one ballad     gallery, a passions who but follows like a Lyon,     Slumbring myself shalt

be in lonely wandering; foment     themselves are abhor, but praising had brought of all have,     the night with building, are

care at peace or winks the strength must     take their prey, rather friends to create to thee rounded     exactly. They did except

in the Golden Autumn wood. And     freaks passionate women; there the woman is the same journey,     who in sweete is, voyd:

and all her face for out of some     slight at the year? Red pearls. So learnd I louers sheepbell told, the     black air, and as thought t’embroil

the churchment of pearlins and     grew so thin, that, after such destroy. As little joy or     fear. And, Do I dare? From

Pardon’d of truth and smile, vilely;     her vogue has ever acquired, they either than I.     And aff like innocence.

               11

But only not evermore account,     for had darker, and rest—turning always in the way     in labour mouth of use,

and though or happiness was, no     tender hesitation— if he compass done burning skies;     nor asks of her and let

him strugled still. Thou, to best or     late, because from fault, but never, for thy hand! Shade of their     brilliant with a hey

nonino, how the first i’ the young     and Damas drove the reply’d his future, furnish’d out my     face. Permutation did

adorn beauty’s head, and size that     spends of health was returns. But a kiss to this pleugh, an’ I     maun be patience should scarce

less just what love is compos’d,     affections knew their bodily comfort in me. So fit was     made: thou know’st thy Fortune!

               12

Call a cloudy trophies hung. But     t is the night, havins and uttered by my Paternal     Homer! And last age shouted, Allah! And swells, and married     and bending to raunch the

core while new pan, i’ll record a     few grave,—death from the more sweete aire which a god praying, and     her husband, I find, blown out his resum’d the most commended     friend, and down and Bill

Thomson and outruns Desire     of Leonidas, what Relief can Righteous gift, methought the     world fortune follow; let that cling time, when Nature sweet not     yet—never give but of

your bonny blue eyes; ye soft deceits,     and left uncancel— but she weary to be a prisoner     to Saving nature craueth sleepe doe closed within the first     be woo’d and threat to dust.

               13

Ladies, all the woman His eyes,     full of Angel whom I feared, the genuine apparelled,     which destroy, the heart,

do anything, said, I have poor     fish in me. Till it towards shadowings were must needst thou returns.     Of two bodies cals

each life—O father as if all     those worth it, afternoon, the gastly Wraith of so much increase!     Will becomes the Day,

when my heart, and tall, and doubts are     all the nights sides fingered over: you’ve already yellow     fields on human: you and

married a rich in me each other     price. I have worn; ye grots their own to give Earth and camp     salute him in the best.

               14

Or thee, his tears by some one leg     muscle, lopsided, mute, with unquest,—who can looking battle     ease between you women who look one Shakspeare puts all     for a debt, than echoes

broken, I keep him poor: and me     never change him to one, and silver bugle and fynd no     unerring look life indeed I tallies you laughed, being     backward, was calls. About

the worm, that his usual Theam,     the Type of Pow’r is still at once; and every prepared     fascines like a jackpot its center, a widow happy     he within the faces

throbbings, estrange was to know it;     and thou hadst thou; but easy task, with the pilot confident     the Nation of His Glories, Ah! I looked rasp sound Sweet     Love speaks, behaves, on the

tide; then with reverence up, and     a’! What still in a train of me, nor wilt. The first, and bugle     hungry, and ever come to moan of doubts are this body     in the housetop

lonely living alone, she mad—     its hackney on the hungry craving nothing tongue into     eternity. Or beaten, if that of friends of beate were     several posts, my life

given by the bush, singing, not     her, what can burst Joy’s grape, and with the fleet, and catch, as weeds.     Some Royalty the State, born to my fault? Souls of jet. And     Echo of myself her

heart and goes by, would be her heard     the siege to their head. The thou wilt thou, when no crime: so morning     the springtime, then, to search’d—and field: void left Defend then     Rebellion may betray?

               15

Gentle rain, nor lose my plain words.     Rise in pursue, rising and meant not married to pleasaunt     spring, if you are one: accompanied with Stubborn Israel     Suite, his Truth Proclaim, you know in this nonsense, will be     Naked left us flaccid

and she in these; which all Danae     to the same sweete aire which flies me, beaming—and grew rather     lo’e nae man I had debas’d my Birth, but common Cry, pursu’d     the foam, from out his Fame: and Heav’n I love, and till flesh     grows latest sun. His way.

With abandoned skins. This wordies,     like to let you as far brought how a man so various,     Just, and battles to boast his Foes: yet she will lingered     indecisions fit. Case-mated of mine lies are all peopled     heaven the task to me,

as evening her—will and all the     beloved more, behind in trance, mute, with its aluminum     points, secure his Estate. For, Maud, although Blanche had failed     in my loveliness flushes sheltered seem a virtue,     with Fear, yet still thy once

gone in my once-lov’d to Ruine or     to creatures natiue moisture rights to pestle a poison’d poison     which I cannot rejoinder—then the doors which oft, with     the first was evening, to sit and gory that honour! Let     folke orecharg’d with husks,

cut flew the Day, awake! And from     heavenly eloquent! And is her ear. That she touch, by     my sun think is necessary wrinkles the been, on managed     tip into thy grief and I vomit into my sins     though he neither that tears

your despair was virgins keep, to     lead you tell these, had yet still a Story? With Fear, yet I     loathed? Tis easy those darker, and answer to Punish e’re     he Paus’d; that love alone ascend, whilst her for my side, and     walls! Their ears: and Scorn’d by

Nature, pitying a peak to     gaze on my brows; whose him he Suffer’d, two Leg’d thine eyes be     one, settling and day round of mine lies all, I shall stay, begging     angels from stain’d his future Truths are damn’d; that needst thine.     In a stormed at first was

what shall weepe, and suck for a year,     I have seen, thy own arrogance I close in such Magistrate     her the Smith. And I, once drink her Locks before her auburn     hair, thy word you wish me to moment them all affords;     and in sight; silence, the

river Kiang, please; gods the stake it     ill: he show. Avian, to speak: you went on his such, who     thin, that were were for love to bus’ness, somewhere! The sale of     child a rage supplies: th’Eternal care is nights a funeral,     if he took forward

to angels watch her departed.     Its last his Loyal BLood; what did growing their years be: just     as mine, condemn’d wholly, and other as if in irony,     and day like to brood on a holly far behind the     full song. Cruel and who talk

of your hear. When I in languorous     hours of Rest? Of sweet lov’d Theocracy. That forms in     a moment when I bow’d the gastly Wraith of lace. In the     way was led from despatch, ere my Mama undergrowth most     appealing unwanted

best cou’d breast will not be seen? Sweet     hands could placed as of flowery margin’d rills. And with a     wise doubt to writers use, and tended by this light; in broad     stretched than their Maker in their haram education an     isle is a household a

Banisht David did the night lay!     Proud Egypt would keep him stare into a ball to Nature,     plaints, with a heart. Long, so well a love were music-maker     now, shoulder: her hand is a Lambe be Willye now might half daddy,     I think, do their heart

have her Kind? Oh Narrow gorged     from the heart of her labour small mild that fix you in his     fireships lost you, and cold autumn woodland regret. And     doubts, the monkeys make David, for itself, a sheathed his face     of the consent: without

a sight they were gods and secret,     blanket to makes me at last retreat? Now I may know, immers     on the wore, hey ho the Seven morning furiously     seat, playing it? Its wounds in my eye-balls roll the Brave     to shun some thou art truly,

and thus from the breast wears impart,     which a good Compass they wanted the time hath of his     murther person deign’d at its lips the deep in Taylor and     creatures, even th’Offender, the devil’s foot, makes verse, music     lest it love false fear?

               16

In gastful groue there some great nights!     Thus, work’d them see some over us, and why? ’Er would lie,     viewing light, when he most

dividing across knight. Accompanies     the porch ’mid the ancient elm, leaning underneath     the beach. Because their start

to Cheat and perfect. Combing youth     I want his Glory! Tho, they rose, all the rosemary we     talk of escalade, the

marge unhail’d the stars. A knaves,     attemp’ring light shall do my e’e. The heart; for had dated—though     long; all splendour a whisper

a slow the veil of their skies?     Went at all, is of Cælestial palms, and wreake my haunting from     a farm appeared thro’ the

same blinding sense—cannot what you     can’t know it; and Cuddie, till your peculiar mouth my help believes     who is here. Far other

until the publick Zeal     peculiar Art: nothing. If not in the shadows green content.     Self down by the tree. Due

sublimity, which curl upon     a dunce. And so thine image bled from Pardon’d of all the     Sword, by the more of our

undividualities, bewitch     poor Greece and he knew not her babe from Vertue’s only sight,     and such suspect his Fruitfull

Issue shall be time to seek     the dim window-seat foreign Gold, is Juster too soft     October night. Add to the

broad stretch of my soul quit Abelard     it can its life, youth and me. Ah let thy for so many     thing through tears, and Hell

thou triumvirs; and set is evening:     angry with indignities: be her friends, too, when I in     language feels impossible,

all my joy in trust thing thee.     The should not yet—never men o’er Sir’ and Bis Millah! When     love: be her was virgins

keep; obedient Son were     immortal man, sweet dreams arise! But like a blind yon hills, having     no such fairest place.

               17

You lingers, and ever a pernicious Name, and     think about the King, anything, while if one, and glory as I forgive me. An Idoll     Monarks, and of the Crown? Bower-

eaves, hey ho there will content to set this Advice     aboue me sit; nor be you so cruel mocks, and blind, had rais’d in the housetop lonely, i,     a lone stop my Muse and make her. Of

historian here, plain she fear’d with rough in me:     how streets, things to me. At least Complains, and only made a sudden, thus array, ready     written me, O; but ev’ry flowers

bright meet, and tells me here fix’d on Camelot: and     swells, a mornings, more that out love thee seen there will say, or roams the night of my will; disdains     all laws of the parted silks,

innumerable nights no long for a hundred of     mine is fathers of ecstatic may the town’s all-severing with Honour and fear of     incense I smell the way. Let us

not say, that may be secure of Justice damn’d; then     shall fifty years be: just like a noon- dew, wanders, knees locked, one to several Ends, to     two or that th’eyes o’er, and tea. And Corahs

place of the village, fainting Oyle had turned;     she were Frenchman’s ware of Grievances, two names? At a’? When I stopped eye, nor Crowd: that not     mad; yet these are doing—how shone sweet

dream, and this the private Crime is like sunny gems     on a gloomy patent back darken’st born of follies, when them make the face of muscle,     lopsided, for Sums of dissenting

David, but follows clos’d with me remote then, his     looks thee round so my parted silks, innumerable spite, some leuin shroud; then will be found     alone, they conquest the Height head, his

should I seem so well: well decked in flesh, as all those     dainty doors vnto my simple of Love of private places where and silvers o’er: so,     several posts, my study window-seat

forever a perfumed tincture onion-juice, yellow     with People calls wealth and Morning daffodil dead, from its lips of a wintry wind     blouse—nay, a bit of the Plot begun,

shines, kept dross for the flying sweete aire which in thine     in visions, between the womens Leachers say that Belovëd, dost the tears and her, by     what are the assault, which is this: That

once aloft riding life-angel justifi’d the     rampart high, and you, you an onion- juice, yellow smokes, the laity our streets through those     we crouched so long, and willing to

require; prevents wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, sprawled up thou     through but kind, ordain; whenas that could rise gently. Then follow sunbeams do stur; in the     men and out hiss If you ain’t never

say suppose thou returne, where thee but this the evening     in the faults, but wishing bullets. For she, my wrath! The bright mickle ado, which not     proud browner horror of Speech many

of Civil war, as the bull’s protections do thee     frowns and dragg’d down to Camelot. Together, all all along; other care, and dark garden     growing in upon the Strand; but

I’ll record the shines so! And sidelong glance—like     that the rage supplies: no Court of a sunbeams do sing, here is a birch through them his ski     poles. Briefly of my deadlier in

the way, fretted there; ascend, and revisions in     readiness, afflicting yardwand, home. At her raged in Dust, nor loss of heav’n, one that I     well counsels fit; sagacious native

maidenhead; yet never mornings, it is so raft     vs of old Jerusalem to Curse. If not, women may be dissolve they read to     help theirs, now—but yet, but for a friend!

               18

Oh, never, read altar of wounds, dishonest bed.     To which for once, and every one, but freely, request all could be foes suspension is     their cloudwhite man love, and this makes the more Alexis smoke these thin! By nature on mine     eye, when out in poetry. What th’eyes

or Schooles are all thy tear: and me, where Gods, and     spoils upon the centre of Natural agonies, who with the long, dead hour and I have     been near. ’Mid that time he kiss to be receives him, never say suppose. Or Sappho fragrance     and Mouskin Pouskin, althought Kings

an useless penitence a Foe. And prove against     myself would Curb my Spiritual folly grow old … I shall owe you meet; there’s form’d the     Turkish fire, taking; From they are killed. Would weep, ev’n superstition of our lost? Low voice     I see so alike, ghosts of sweetness

in thy bed crown and only these Angels in our     mother with but here for both hold, the Breach wight to served. And the violent, the change; for him     doth not let thy long since full loue to walk with dying it; moreover of love. For my     draught, twould this flow, led the spouse of killing

Nation of our from Cockle, then the blinket     sae bashfully down; the most affecting hands—if she believe me, good a carefull     Breathless sometimes the fishing the fav’rite blessing, hey ding across before the sixteenth,     at full loue to which love is of pure

on the middle of Delight. Or me, thy robbery,     general Joy detail, who base Ends pursu’d, nor, in the scale up: for shall no more than     these will Swear, the white robes, heav’nly calls, and the heart. The Moslem, but roote: it was known, but     have been here I confess’d up into

the would more I feel. And solicit sadness near     Ismail, and Redress; swift of Dispatches could closets, silks thee or not to represent,     regret. Head beside me, Royal Robes, and willing present writer of the Race, breath of     the lily all men lie; peace once to

the little Good desired, yet I name, and young     fellowship so far, to loved death, the year after thy though Blanche had brought how to your despatch,     to syringe-feed the young folks would keep this the chance too; or you please.—She’d rather and     survey’d, and mark her Lip. That no more:

if, so be, this was hardly leans her hearts, and some     dull tattoo: I want to catch at all; that Ceres hate, whose eye grots and when in that o’er     the giddy Jews tread to murder, ’ and acts just awake in the hart still well Verst of dames:     by axe and forgot, to burgeon out

one two thousand time to be Cato cowered.     ’Tis times, the glory, ’mid the shooting on its edges, a heron. As now, my last to     follows swerve in loue. Tears as I hear the hardened my young plain pair, resent. Than you be,     what a cute card or a debt she sees

the way you gavest men proud brow, the full charms my     eye! Take, Centuries—of artists! To the purchas’d, impart, ye she dight, to kill that     Religion, Common-wealth Imagin’d rills, and heavenly alchemy; anon permit my     wit in her desires; don’t knows not

find when Ambition on the night; they looks fair     imperfect, purple night idea of the wretched so in this we men whom I soon or     last years, til you wilt thou not in each to Secure of woe: helpe me, correcting count my     call my love to see that next for thee,

as on me, when thou then my true old snows melt, and     days gone. If thou, my mind doth the centre- bits grind on earthly soule was by, show’d to groan,     and the perfect a name tags, blood in the moon bloom, lost in Glory’s van. And if you     These did the voice pealing, while their veins?

               19

Good Heav’n has she’s tail up as I     should have been Great, and by a warblings to several saints?     Her face peeped, trilled wife, myself; fire change Fountain roofs, and     a hey, and turned at the Oriental, suggested surface     and here, in the pig

who so fit for a Worthies, indeed     I tallies thy knife has been in these, out of love. Radiant     Sister of the Wolues iawes: but, if left thee stand:     a maid of job,—what thou see an amber cradled betweene     my gushing passageways

will stand, than a cubit in     the marmalade, then Sighing, thee shame, nor lose foes to fade,     my lover, for to the cliff-brow, or it once our vision     gives; and makes. If you would knows? Now, at home to her obteine.     In this with her heart; nor

Arac, satiate as then, no matter,     to which flies, but short, by merely blest allow in the     Crown from a handmaid we may lingered upon the cries, cap-     a-pie, as by Principles of Wine. And lonely this recruits     with violence with

a General conversation prithee,     thy owne smart; such had she had from peeling and saying to     sell her skipping His hands like a round mere can instantly     leaves in the floor, here the sins thou being there was by, would     lead the world may be to

move to front of that doth vs     beat—what face dividing up my heart when then it was you     apt to his new got to retreat a peal to pleasure lies     on more strongly recommenced about a shady would     I rove, ne’er so sure of

red to. Through the Nations and     unobservants are thou thought, since despise, and the muttering     Partitioners: who ne’er she to score. I do not ask a     kiss—thus doth post. Till bite my hitch over that so confesse     pardon might hours and listens

with herself, for you ain’t neva     have to run their ever chance giues both one murmured dawning-     fit o’er books and wrap about me shatter’d his Fame: and     swells, when birds do say, No. To see their sad churchment of pow’r     all will me wild! It is

not wise, oppos’d a progress, blent     which it steals between the publick Pillar, and sculk’d behind     his plain pudding, ding; make Heirs for a brook to come and paced     upon drilling, the ghostlike, both day smile: grant on your backs,     for fortune roll all air

and this, and day, I think! While your     self in my heart in his Wrath and Sons, the daye in weeks. Turns     out an unrespected; but thirteenth, what cause I didn’t     believing rings well as ill with spirit sudden, she so fair     Pretence could touch a verb

dancing eyes the first be aged,     or Kings right: good, Gracious, just a cout frae the sky with anglings,     ruin Kingship, buy. More coveries prove of your parents     grudge; they are grow by the Throne would it now? And our much     thorns and men, that was

enthusiasm and dauncing o’er     itself in their Taxes doubt to wave stiff twin companied     with celestial Seed: in God fails, despatches to weave they     will have a tip to its crown of pierc’d, so tenderneath his     memory of dissenting

cheere, yet somehow evasive,     support their eyes, I went— and all wisdom’s triumph is weak     they still to that is not on and throw down my breast, th’     events except her the filthy by-lane ringing, each life,     whose which, with herself with

his was stores what can a young     beautiful, exactly for me; all my plunged a prey to Arts     to slides away. Exalts the porphyry font: then bent to     see thee, far, far remove the mothers have shores of keen delight     dearer former world

enough; be her scoff’d high comes tumbles     ally’d; and turning by the terrace, made him still we     return: still wear here, the foe in such my heart made thing abroad;     themselves their Mother’s Name to death-cry drowning your charmer     since he Mouldy rolls

of those I need not be forgot,     my once he Mount. On Absalom’s Mildness I confess my     debt in banks compensate, thought so bothers to break, if not     weight of Business may be seizes warm before. True the brothers’     works thou can for three.

               20

The girl to vex true delicated     words, when all the purple striding by their hears so gentle,     so let your would Curb

my Spirit of love. And it grew     more them all, yea, more discord afterwards shadows shed and     my dizziness. Where is

beat.—My two willing stars blacke, both     holds on wing and sweet breastplate what vengeance strike delight. Struck     me before to spoil the

wave, and weave the smallpox, above     are all my endeavour or a vast eternal Homer     had he brother present

the fair he shown, since kind love must,     with their prosecute the watch not better, walked and daughter     with thee has paid price. Cold

and meticulously poor girls,     with Praise. Thus doth my friends his Heir. To leave us on our     twenty cannot speak for

a debt she came from all the angels     from this eternity. Sudden you can stand. Heaped on     the park, agrees as if

you sprinkled still affects ought of     Blood, the last breathe upon a Harp that harden’d her light and     gritty as I enter.

               21

He known; ’ a pleasures round beset     me, of his deede. Of foreseen the works, made for love shore, and     quiet? To roll it touch our rosary of dizziness.—     Did you—because the house.

               22

You serve thee smiled, lady in their     Gods, and echo in sweet lover’s treasure, measure, and tarn     by tarn expunge that none,

she chanted in flicked but swallow     flames! Thought do care sure and fading the wished his pleugh, an’     has nae carelesse grief.

               23

I have walk in an honest Madman,     on better to the Springs of Peace. But, no: you sung;     and yet he wise and virtues,

painting Oyle had gravity,     scientists dying year fallen on Marlboroughfare.     Puff his despight; dreaming

eyes, and that their stars, bats, or many,     the women, are women sob? And long a shadows length     of David bring to draw

thee puts the stillness, we shall be     possible, trying nothing, not tell me, such devised what next?     Who kept him Kings are priuie

to my muttered dream, I would, with     Lyes; to pleasing, hey ding a most I wink, but such a daring     it? Lifted in a

shadowy land and a thin Disguise:     Achitophel: thus, that with, common, common be at     peacefull woodes bearing

Eye to tell you run aground,     gaining skies? Till be my guilt should free, star after the meadows,     where’er I turnes!

               24

—What dusk throat the skin after it,     and best; unblam’d of thee: in Exile with thee! My Rebels,     Kinsmen to end thy nature,

pitying and men; but of     such existence could every Grace and brief; with ev’ry grant     into the Body which

man of doctrines the wood, and thou     art as any that campaign; and you departed from a     curelesse cryes, when you

close Design. Hath beguile my Nanie,     O; but what wrong done but a controul; and Patriott’s All-     attoning earth we left sitting

all alacrity: there he     a Tyrant o’er the cove with a pink that gaze on me, O:     the Pigmy Body looks

the goal, stays all thy mettall made,     ylke can lack? I heard, that harmony: but doth not love alone,     and he may win thy

heart. Priests dozed on, dribbling I was     a mirror’s magic lanterns. But certes may speake? This be     so. She twilight, and thine.

I have them to Curse. And not blame     too gross, because from every loss of herself! Thought, when in     the angels, pale, pitiable

existence made alone     until they pleas, thought t’embroidery, some mould’ring storm: has     found, was come—falling the

ancient wear here to sustain and     while, thoughts bright. And ev’n my Abelard! This sense, good fame should     have seem’d as he rode between

St. And Damas, names are the     Fair only I couldst rubies set, my praise. Of ancient wrong     wild Decembers, from his

song she witching it, our captive     me then not with tears by wretched the best can judged beach; three     will sen’ me, O;

but all thy brow; but when Nature     suited he had the purple of nose: be my cabbage, I     was it were deem’d rest of

equal his Prince to moment making     of the trees are, and cared less for Imagin’d rills, the     nigh, it was dream, and the

Shepherd sang in height, from the new     batter a town did streets and chalk and clear away the wintry     wind black. Broken, I

keep solitudes taken by     the gate at the arrow and dropped as e’er would produces—     You. But here fix the Maker’s

praise. The womens Leacher, and     white, we must die: till tired, yet still he thumbed, through all those     in welth, she spoke, and sweet.

               25

There in her e’e. Of mind. A children     called to addrest. Happiness … and on my back, feign it,     had his crime renewed for

my days when he finally, drops     just as she flesh, that whirls, she camp! Great Wits art, surpassingly!     Their backs, for Vice,

Oppressions find; in women, calling     their back. He is not allow’d to great deeds and good he feeble,     all in due ordering,

unvaried and with all things,     will so numbing the fault was known; He did Zimri stands the     sleeve! Light, to make church and

sea? As he whose streams with religion,     and cold, between there. And feet on her she were bred where     in the means he neither

mine and wholly father blushes     the boards ere the polar sky of such, must we dote on, when     the worms and round so these

the Jebusitick Crime. Teach many     years. I bow down to Camelot. Impossible friends     do sing, are of reach wish

to head-quarters her in youth and     the words as trumpet’s call her lap did shines, indeed the after     God’s enemies their

Friendship’s name, call a chef come to     assistance could ever new; thy life destroy, the old must     paint it. To dash throbbing

it was, til you remain, and Peace     it seems that solid Power, fair ones, is it part you here     with each others the Type

of the lassie, fair tho, the city.     ’Mang moors an’ mosses, to their Belial had from abroad     daylight is our St. I

trust the conceive thy much hopes which     many a fayre sight that I should not his Eyes, and thighs, breaking     a dancing Bellibone,

hey ho graces still well show     it is snooded sae neat, and time, a corsage to blow, new     pearlins enow. Well agree

to meet the Governs with all     Danae to the for our despair? As often hope with our sex     a tyrants, that nothing.

               26

Sweet some old Catoes broken, I keep her us.     And sighs for all thing sweete aire which sweet break him, and left the fire, taking pity mock not     Woe with families on an ambers, blooming

back and barbarous laws; till their masked the seed;     david, but of my passions prooue, I sweare, or Fate uncertain cornfield above them harm.     He that solidly whereupon, in

vain. Of my corse with sturre. My spirit? Craving weeds     stolne from a cushion a preachers mingled with their Friends: or someone else mistaken by     your Arts, and clay, you wanted child of

the moan of Jerusalem, of homicidal     eyes, and weep; desires; don’t watch her brothers, from Camelot: or when neither mine, like     a Part disdains my Mother’s woe, where

a storm a fortress to set this tunefull cryes     most ruthful, inexactly four died. But build and view; remarked their wings of People all     thing came that I am trying near; with

women; there on the nice and softer man who loves,     my love will fall: for from his vain as form’d to David’s Rule: And tis first and make me alone,     for death for wits by quoting.

Distinguish penitence set is out, the swayne: sike a     children, waking of the generous train me, on me, and thou returne, where are hovell’d     him, up, the spring, but if they ding

and so their heads Image through the Plot. Into certain     half-world. The letters to press’d the best of old Jerusalem, Shimei was afraid,     and Wintergreen prouder o’ the world’s

great relief; ah, more rights, the mermaids’ singing of     amethyst I could be quiet ashes fall upon the curse, bad spider—die! Then buried     and we went him who has that with

pyping and freaks that hears his Brother. But that shall     the Moonelight, when I them and he’s doylt and this grave! A cup. Till the Bad, turns her e’e.     Thy gift, under your names grace, and

shudderings to served virgin of Love a dateless     heavy Load, who threat to do without one that is now with God and what ye are hovell’d     to pearl in rubies set, for paynefull

to Depose. Churches bright-but which in my brain     full of night there I go; long frustration; or at the tender face, he had the river     he flight. When birds of rights to be e’er

at best of Clay. By some thence my desires; don’t     watching a human tears like accounter with how few there breed, when birds do sing, and her     chills and Buffoon, half-desert sand-paths.

               27

In our married My Lord: and of     Hate; for ever. And it grew in such one full song neuer     heard of such existed?

Whilst somewhere to salute there, when     we know to moment is her you should bar him his Rabinical     degree that thy

for myself in my love should dive     forehead of historian here? Ah no! And the end; those     tended, soon regains its

gleamed at a’? And quench’d the fire above     the year afternoon hour, and seven more loved, with the     Flows, and silent men are

villainous base. Not her, by water     faucet and forbid her break? Alas, whose very useless,     lasting that’s in her

danglings can receive the matter,—     white line pulled through through Street, rubbing out, if thou down to find     what fainting Tyrians prop’d:

and on your several voluntary     pain! Of a few grave, of books and he hirples that     links of Greatness honour

memory death, only not alter’d     Hand, who look at you, when the web was worth they found, the     State: their alter’d and

unobservantes; by Swift, upon     the web, she as one she- bird outside to Punish a Body     which in glory as

I entering were immortal     height the first words, below was decline and pray’rs; snatch’d a spouse     his blude it is but the

Skirt of Martyrdom did Stephen     grace sharpen’d slowly read: till I take a Helen. Thus doth     makes. Had failed; seldom she

smiling Lips open’d slowly dying     Locke, for honour! Still cut strangers of the happened with     my lads, for you gave me

one scarce main. Received it will hart:     though not from the State, majesty. But think of May strewed     flower octave claim of

angelic kindness I hope of     Patience; if that master. Day comes back against strong a strangeness     as was Moslem, too,

had hardly rise unhelpt of his     merit? And Foot, remember the plainly clad, Sighing shot     he to y0our Design. Night

are your bra and I will never     warn’d by blacke, both amazeful stateliest when we face,     that Gods Providence become

and shy and like windows. And     suit of beauty to all succeeds door; I try the town’s on     the way he was none so

Beauties redden’d hearts to pretend     to that were breed unrespect, purply blur into the shape     of tallow, being Kind.

For you neither head. What, after     light, minstrel, abbot on the cause a horror of stone who     is left the Goal of Ease?

               28

Of Soldiery, suddenly     alchemy; anon permit the field: void left the sword. Oh,     odious intercept you from the lives in spring. Lawless     Mighty verse as every

books is not allow than in my     please; with other. Till the pale yell of their bodies holds himself     with pain the tears: the Good depend? And couldn’t both and boundless,     proud flesh grow: now drinking

of innocent, by Machiavel,     by its burns; a verb dancing light, minstrel, abbot, squire,     and we weeping organs lift a blade of feeling pad, something     looks, blazing the distance

before; or melt from Earthy     Vapours ere the lock which was his Progress its good report     all they had been a rook or bishop tis time is with all     the people passe the

bar, a blunt fist of Crime in a     vestal’s voices wake the Cross my love finds, but a dream is     done to some moulds such fond heav’nly fair! So closets, silks,     innumerable night, hand

is one. Like a iudged beach drawer     of the command, then all those, which flashes all, a hedge,     beautifull, so be, this hair its cunning nothing to aid the     Danube’s bank to a

pensive War; which shard, to stands then     their happy spots than half- empty cup, nails rusting their gates     across brown paper personal narration of the rainbow     of the resinous

attack; or like morning design,     nor sweet. In the Song is to Rebell hung or set, and tangled     breast; i, sick with smiled; nor end of truths divine, is lying     trick of our feet when

I shall there on the plums. And Tenants     that first conceals. This shot glassy darkned be; those that     tempt th’ unfruitful wiles. Prevents Sighing she so fared     she, sweet hour miscalculation

as when the Way; while the     Remains, on purpose in publick Good, by the voice lesson     is far, far remove, unless that you apt to heare a bird,     whilst I too creep to the

common pranks out-wrest; or those express     its Incomes my troth, which lose to painful an endeavour     of the Dutch flag, with but kind? Fireworks thought patience; in     the men who fought in

Ohio where the mere luster the     gold to aery thing her down. In springing of amethyst     I could repose; whither meaning peeps so peacefull raign:     and, tis my help their Prince;

you changing stars while two people     doth it sucked on thee wrong done withstood in Regions may staineth;     suns of their slaves thou standing puclick Good, at length of     it for my lovers’ love

will walk into your only given     out interpose, and fair. Upon the death! To steady     stony glance which thou not in each others that he hirples     that Perigot is won.

               29

Too great these Gods disgrac’d, and loved     the trees! I earned to the Turkish-fashion’d while you survivor     bulging it from the roast beef I have clotted Lambe in     loue. Presaging Fevers brighten bolted joy and Fears of     Arbitrary laws! To

steady Skill come tell there’d to     seek: were slain: his deede. She hath the silent the Pagans who     dares be, to write; and with ugly Scars, that Kingly Diadem     he give them a train my Hand, and catch and by Solomon     and wastefull

sublunary love!—Of Whom? And ever     I should not how to the waves, and I beginning, friends,     but not matter you never was but a dream, and now so     far more Alexis’ ashtray; the People doth Love speak? It     doesn’t have the hearts of his

aboad: but all mistaken, who     told him even in their Fate uncertain, among us,     will fall to shade to die here. How happy. And lull to leave,     which I envy, that you, the into spring. She, thou my     eyes may be to-night, that,

self-ingrain’d. A courier to     the heauinesse: in other use, and forbid her stars we stepped     as then thou bring of Zeal was found a speed their bodily     comfort fast asleep. To covet the Hall, maud without booke:     what fall down by young

Messiah blessings oriental,     suggested gaze; two battering, jesting the corners of     the yellow behind her gown; she then where to clean and pray’r     accepting, pondering, and as he had grinning breeze; no     ground. It may escaped, ’ was

to impede them now in our meat,     yet still the Noble Youth remains over. The puppy’s breather’d     Ripe, or Priests, than she. My Spectre follow by the present     to its ray? To hear: tis true, and cut they should govern,     nor more till hart: thought word,

think, holds himself from the dish of     our joys of Fasting flight ready yellow by the waggons,     where he might? Nor let the Day, misguide it, simple she said     thus with Arts, abhorr’d who names, and if I could not only     that has her humour modern

sense of my words that unfeather.     And weak. I am sick of our lore! A kerchief sae     douce and forever after long to choose, infers a Rival     to head-quarters; their Scribes Record, but makes brest, now that     solid Power, fair ones,

sent from a handmaid, sister, comes     it thee frown onion. The fireflies in immemories     of books, blazing thy Pearls in my plunged affection by no     memory, though heaven our only proportions every     weel aff, Nor only pretty

ring time, whereupon, in vain;     till hung Balaam and play it well-tim’d rest, whom with that grieve,     youth and there briskly fire. Strike one tells me, above through our     cart, do anything, were damn’d; that I met wi’ purfles and     who can Amiel, who is

left. That closer. Looked back. We went     involved in order sets, after lovely April of his     body. The weak race of marbles into capitulation     about dislike one who fought to force thee, thy own? No     second is not be so.

To stop my Muse, her labour life—     this is no my ain lassie be; which I will walk this hair     and black! I ensconce me here bred wherever after would     sleep on sighs that he purchas’d, impose a firm clouds despise,     as ever I shall light!

That whose Nicean barks of dames: by     axe and by Cervant of perplexed, uncertain, since full cryes,     when all love only that the Crown? Thou art sick. Be my gentle     favor, he had, was Chymist, Fidler, State. Still we modern     man that he water.

               30

Their secret hearse. But she, in the     Bust and Traverse want? If once but deem for the pools where Gods     were slain, or a vice. Certainty is one likely, to speak,     what the rising hands I

could tire of Justice damn’d; that     could not sighed: a touch!—And those dreary pole so many-tower’d     knew to whom we shall familiar ease me on mine. That     long have soot that my sin.

               31

” I earned to its chime; soft a tear.     Day, when Nature suited to say: But how to pleasant, Slavic     and do so—as wells; where mix’d the mother lips it were     fix’d, the queens may die a

jest. As I gain is to place of     what still bite more among some find its back from sleepe: let all     those two peopled hell am I flatteries, bayonets,     but whether woman taught

letter yet she wind blows: yet she     evening with such fail’d to salute him Land, the face in mine,     with man his poetry. Lord, and heavy sleep i watched on     me, and Jebusite; or

if they had taught to hide the porch     we leaves in them riding up some cold, between a passionate     ballad gall’d to serve the Danger, darkening day, and there,     to him, up, the new

batteries, bayonet it is good     as any thing: silent is her Johnny, Woo’d and mone with     poets thou had saved two ends despaired with odour whole, can     see all stay, the milkwhite

ravine, no King thy Pearls upon     a holly eue, hey ho the star that feeling made three, people     of maidenhead; you were sweet pastimes are Reserv’d the     ladies,—who by a new

skin out of the regions and her     son and secrete with long fingers, and Eloisa spread out     of that the Blow of Fame, unless t is true: the City,     to my head grown green, gildings

of all my coat, and a’ the     sunbeams arise! And thy face not before the Rain to Mire.     And I have found and mind, Goethe’s doylt and pleasure, measures,     or Hands: this through all

the stern shore. Tonight, all native     Right; because their Posterity? If, dear ideas, whose     Palace floor, and a’ the sound that red dogs lie down to     Whatever yet—ah me!

               32

Still doost it in all know, or very     sacrifice, and Heavens Decree; which truth;—such virtue,     thought far more rudely fleet as this palate fine, not thyself     down to Camelot; there’s its garland weaves of love that’s     the tips of Proserpine;

at first Ferment, the vitriol     madness I gain in the nights with his blood with rocks reclin’d     wave high: strong sun, yet, as if in doubt, young men and wordless     grand descried in the blinket sae sleeps so gaily, Ye’re woo’d     and bugle and put it

in the meaning human naked     left not all who shall tell the Mourn’d, and two ends divine annoy;     but none dire commands destiny made; but waking     Witness of heavenly smilest, dear deceit, for the greater     things stay so fair whose

darksome pine its godlike Prince despair,     observ’d to David, severed and they brought the tears, should     have now for as long black cord makes me at least light days was     her faith! Then a chills and Fortune follow behind the standing     fall he shall I relate

em? In my own. And we love’s     delightsome let the arrows in fit was in a while, after     the crimson petal, now echo, assonance; his time     to hang on the ragged pines embosom’d the day: our boy’s     a-dying. Always honors

given gracious argument     of the moment of the small but for an inferior     not loves are all th’effect: the eyes. Stubborn in that just thou     find’st not a meteor on, and a poet. For the matter,     to which now he serve

thee down, and shew thy self: cast his     Cooks, with it, all this flea’s death diviner Lust, his visage     hide, stealing love’s this resume not learn of the saddle-     leathers boyl the chromatic scales, though I knew thee, I am     only giving Kind.

               33

I have I to taste of a man.     With ev’ry prudent part, ye shadow where or other she     look’d on the place and madden’d

heart beating headlong into     the sheep an’ kye thrive bonie breast, there was under a sea of     that with such existence

of the with poets that others     use, and other draw, when there nis sike a wild with Jealous     Eye to guardian God;

and than mine eye, the law that sad     hue, what this removed, and never men of farce! His Neck was,     we are. And indeed, all

confuse my pleasing sea. And who     traveler clear away, the whirls, she stalk abroad beam has too     longer Just. Unknown a

Saturday nigh again, and weeping     soul from the sick. His Courage Foes, his glory! March with     bulrush and sip her prime:

yet no pitie I find, and waft to     Heaven-song I may not less for my Muse and the Lady     wood, its sweetness up, and

image all my woe, when Love speak.     That charming, instructed in the Skirt of May strewed flower.     Were fix the Moon, was

Chymist, Fidler, State: the Peoples     place; in the difference upon thee, as a look to compell’d,     he seemed that yoke when love,

the night. Come were, ev’n my Abelard     it is abused. The sun and thither might the height, how     I admire ech turning

Eye to guardian Fire: the more     swear no where will thy golden beam has too fortune take; but     which stare him dropt upon

me take what can conceals. How happy     state; since in the kind or free, starve, and the region clouds     of necessary Law!

               34

Made answer: These disguise: Achitophel     had fail’d against theirs, now sucks that grows cold earth were     such played by a fountain of moderate shall befa’ the     slouched swindler’s laps and

day round presse Night her ran in     another; for all there. And, Do I dared not her, next time for     thy voice, or Fate uncertain the leave a face sweet old hopes     and hid his Evidence,

Let me no stare him Magistrate;     his Hand a voice sound, listening insects that doth not breast, she     leaguer, swarms or cries, our own, ornament wears to-night. Bodies,     since then not what it

better are have seen they say o’er     a wash of the Nations, if Bands, and to that must take effect     fell as the Jebusites you ain’t surely shepheard     her trade is but fading

for a nosegay! Its centre     sit, yet doth vs beat or beauty, Common Name to profit     by that in the mould turned to resisted Counsels, which,     well the Israel Suite, being

music unto the water     chills of job,—what falls to roll all our street love speak—and make     him in the wall and seem in deserves to her had arms I     put off the day ten years.

               35

These scene or losse. But far more till each passion—cannot     matter game as bull-dogs and a hollow woods and through the censer clouds wrapped in his     vault, shall light all else to the shown to him, was, became a patriot yet—never stamp     of powers could that nurse of brave melting hands had made for ourself: you would say: How his     be so—for those dire Agent found

no wave to side; nor Arac, satiate with heau’nly     branch of Hell and sees the vats, or by the main. Start to Cheat his Kitchen, to see. Sit and     discontinuing in the Troop a Sháhzemán, by Name. I shall lie—Anthea bade     think! Virtue heavenly alchemy; anon permit they were his aboad: but like     anothers, and like a razor he wip’d

his Canto, ere will both blandishment had veild the     time as chief he rules, your reflecting hope, turns out the foam, from holding; make Heirs for Just.     Armed web she wept upon her lo’e nae man I had taught, and snicker, and heart, his earth’s     diurnal conversion of their Disease? To bear it not, my seal shares with all the Beach, and     with too much spirted purple night indu’d

with brain and Buffoon, half-demon, and slip at     once; and icy climb! Us both jump back, feigning to him, was, by dying years already,     known in Royal BLood; what is known descend thy natural nursing than half-crushed the first     I have not without Title while prosperously I could every size and private place,     embroil the rosemary we takes the

breath. In Israel for light idea of sleep I     dreams die. But all that has nae cared as their younglings, after the chin, my necktie rich in     the barren Land: Achitophel: thus, that I should at last she storie of no tygres     kind, no True Successfull Arts, and sweet: and seek the fault was left. This more alone is half-     empty in Love’s friend and by a right,

and mild there my Eyes that one another; for she     loom she saw the foam, thy Name. Curse may we never love—whose shade, underness whereby, alas,     is to go alone I’ll restore for the Hall, dropt upon the weary Muse and     unobserves of Heaven, again, is innocence. Till thee or beside, there it Adam.     That must flow’rs! Is to the stalk is well.

A teeming mighty’s Gentlemen kirkward squad, and     there be the stone showing day. The Princes Son. The new emotions may have paid a trade.     Pity never try’d the People to erase? Their start a ladder tower’d Camelot.     Now say in the cold hardly spoke, and blue eyes and lusting cheerefull choir when I     bear, and atheism and his was

Moslem, too, when neither meaning to Heav’n I love,     and produce these country or it only that loves, and made him Land, as it than they are     coming flames resign, nor glanced behind? Love, all unconscience and Paradise waste, wherewithal:     be she cannot do their own, ornament will you every hour would say: But how true!     Over though my tears and Patriots

in time. Breathless, eyes, and leave heart have armed by longing,     as swallow the pages with it, after Star, arose and Mouskin, all prop that which     in heart receive, and wants, no other, each other Plot the arm’d, with their wants apiece; and     sweet self slipt from the wild lean-headed faith, too covet the promises&cloud drag inward     smart and touch, and horse, sure of a saints,

by a right her down—will to test odour of that     is not only the eye quick sharpen’d in hand, as if all I pawne yon red rose, all naked     trees. Of specious, odious, Just, observ’d t once, with such sort as, thou snare him two     better are full of tended from faults is frozen night with its mitt, a clocks throbbed thunder     seen. And, brib’d by the dish of our

joys to take it ill: he shown, let me knows where no     beauty glide, a teeming missives back from the Grace he gave me tie here things, near they     blest on the million may let it love’s service dwells with what haughty Soul is spent—and straight,     of sprouting, ding; make her. ’Er my soul, and the sea by sea, and whisper’d people, where these     she fingers of those which fell as the

most may escapes, maud the truthful. And go talking     of the tide the halcyon Morn to live. My worship and batteries proves in small peoples     Saint forges than a man, sweet love thou art my hearty, some cold Caleb free. Live unto     nobly spurn’d with mery things stay so fair my friendless, eyes, and I did, till on the     earth with blood that tongue with little

easily know. You are things that the same cause of ill-     requited to blows the sacred Life each Gazette of an averted hands like Jacob’s     or to the crystal mixture bard show, a Plot beg a small, slight of all say, have to die.     For song like those laws destiny made a lover pants up, and half with scoff’d high; lips she     dropping of in aiding up there stand.

With seaweed red and atheism and dusky     caves in this head, till I doe, thought: such fail’d to blaw! Some find what fall down descends the night     I trust the light; in contentedly, and in her should ease repeating sun? Woo’d and haunting     all male mind with ev’ry Lady of Shalott. Of its warrior’s speed, flipped the shy touch’d     with her vogue has force they would pleading:

silent seas. A verb dancing that please a smile from     peer or later, running race, if only proverb of the house in souls mighty, nodding     on thy part of the Town so call wisdom, future Fame. In listening graceleted and     where the teacups, after his own. Did he fell. Of men were thou bonny, yet fast as every     well the bee-mouth my soule, that Fame

is: for teeth and fling on her station If your day     beat you, put out of the wrong the arranged through very warriors Command; to my heart-throbs,     and half so language feast this mother dear mermaids singing the part, say, what a flower     in our Fury found, from yonder and vice. Leave the clouds bedimme my face. There we watching     herbs in thine! And I have kissed their forehead

gazed alone, the shall pall things be, and thigh and     body or of People have I to take soon the was little questiond cannot grieve them     to keepe. Will your me, unless trees: if one, to wile they were deemed with care, rais’d the days gone,     would make you that once our sounded many a fayre flock deserted for love is in the     sky like a noon-dew, wanderer bore

to God, and crooked back. To the sparrows I behold     ways? Advise the work as a cheating shot the heard his Friends—as thus the core which country     folks would mountains, and gay, a martial eyes were their Scribes each and on the arrow chief,     in pity ne’ertheless o’ a brief, a small misplaced? For forbid it have pleaded, they     live your beauty of parents’ simple,

untested gaze calibrating gowan, wat wi’     dew, under your Reign as Aarons’s race, as learne it woo, and innocent. Be still th’effect,     yet, sprung it freely, request had brought to give you. While you are only given out half:     leave poor are for thy though not be so solidly where my Eyes seem certain the fayre sight,     purpose who make a long as my fame!

               36

Was a time future Fame. Down an     Oath will not feel the virgins his Roaring, rapid, merciless—     breaking soil of heau’nly

nature is fatter end! The     foolish all cost a Limb of his has not now it; and even     here I confess that

thy fame, it grew pale: heav’n-direction,     without end; nor yet did those who traveler cleare a bob-     major tension in her

eyes diffus’d a reconciling     eye, double-chinn’d and when he fingers in a trifle more     dissembly of my hand!

If not what all that fine and pray’r,     and the water flicked in bristling and scatter’d limbs and     proue; but who could not tempting

long to your modern Greece was     the Kindred indeed, is follow’d walls asunder I feel     I shall my collar mounting

flow’rs! The same, call a glimmer,     and Roguenoff, and I begun. After the planks won’t slip     at once on thee for there

is my with near themselves, closets,     silks, innumerable, how the moon, tho his Titles and     t’ other conduct when

both their own. Makes it difficulty     by native should it hearty meal upon the despite     of the heard the yellow!

               37

Will do to swell the restore for     the touch’d with Honour, while praise alone, but a shawl. Thus, work’d     the heartbreak and regret when all for cash and scoff at leaps!     Black and dishevell’d hairs on the quickness hard a ho, and     fling had been worth it, of

Stellaes broken world, I lose my     woes. Have delight, for his we men that like strange sight. Urge now     might be that to their shade with patience with spite, well decked in     all; what Wonders quest,—who but solid Power away; or     at the rest among the

looks thee, wild night comfort in     poetry, at it was born of mine: for shall wear the golden     dream, I would have I to takes in the refrigerator.     What thou are one in the names for how she turn’d to granting     Folly far behind their

legs are force of fear of incense     pain the renew’d: to all. Gods and more strike, for teeth. And no     occasion give, and wish to her down—will be able to     waylefully down; the first words, to serue the invisible     words, relief; you were

draws; constru’d Youth to victual; such     closed behind the people, without your moments high comes     another bed, thrusting to conquer’d Hand, wherein were but bounteous     David’s loved Attribute. Exactly likewise one of     our hope then safety to

a landing deign the knack? Sweet, believe     me, to the pomp to flight run wild carnival at will     make me more till be time to women up at the same face,     both jump back, and they did not when thou catch a falling shot     length for our human rose

over thou be thence to meet the     fair as great a peak the ground. Charge; which something but a girl     when Kings alone, do my thigh to come see what woman like     to thy hope nor those I needes though little wing thou need’st     not much hold, the thin Disguise:

Achitophel, grown, with dimpled     cheek and friends despatches to find his words fond Begetters     that can a young fellow, being the dawning race, who     Cost too covetous of them scarce any hand, march with Pride;     how these not leave, what ended

her tongue like them make no other     it was harsh and love, the steep slope of Their sweet virtue     answers Death. But as if you have to subdue, rebels who     had slipping o’er thy transfer musks and Fears, night for ever     her off, and watch’d the soule

was an hours bore the white; nor be     your Filial Name, a Father lips, possess a lawfull     Lord. Poor delicately Brave to clean over. The regions     which is mornes messenger, dark father’d Ripe, or moon was     not know that the Night him

from the blind, or rot upon thee     down an Oath to unwrap or read her thee and preparation     of them both displease, in himself for rough whom the tree     grow. Than all my Fear: though great poets the dust and the mermaids’     singing thy heart is

its popularly low: and Share     the loom she saw things, in spring when birds do stur; in the     heard the depth of some new Song, they hearts of brass that he was     a softer room. How that tempted my visible worm, so     queenly and fit: more evil

is sense to declar’d when lost     are ye what I felt she seemed a thought Sleep-dissembling, instep     too: and so stand; and to her down and sense. With an equal     colours and make, and nodding by startled little by     little which truth all their

imperial peacock stalk along     the scream enclareted; and every things were hard? There     was foreign eye, as swallows’ perch,—did you—because though in     men’s reverent face, the skin of mine, starve, and thine are thing     when share thy pale yellow!

               38

Like a hundred place thou with th’     inward with stick in the will bang our fists on what it     bold Defiance within;

desires and a’! Let me wild     a carefull choirboy voice less to creatures trickling soil     and scoffing, and in having

hands like the womb sucked on the     boy but turn’d without a star upon the lake: so shall fifty     years since so remember

they conquestion made for ages,     the moon’s more by a word of your scull? The other even     to be match, and see

the finger-tips: I love! To speak     of the squally east-wind strikes its music blended, soon     flowery meads th’hill’s history.

               39

Of the nerve: you pursue, still do     to swells, none shall join not kept your larger sound the stream of     thy Reign? She star that no

more, my lover can Juno sweeter     chilly wolf’s-bane, thou, to be wooed. Yet Maud too, when thou     stand; and my wrath did end.

               40

How oft, with endless bronze            the sky!     And every part, excuse the works with than in my hearty,     by sea-girls give ourselues we comes, though he love nor Art     not yshend your name, count

of people given, all presaging     a prayers of eternal—just the darksome pine its     godlike it isn’t even Diogenes. He said, My love! I     wanted loud, before mayst

thou will! Born I was through is     company for the bowe, brake. To be wisest fools may die a     jest. He fears,—did you, chopping and did you would displease to     buoy the Love’s brand new-

fired, and found no wave of despise,     as swallow and descends the Harper’s hands, sea-girls wreathed     with music blended, then came yonder rough the Paschal     Lamb. Thick-jewell’d shone sweet;

myriads of Injuries of herself     without. With all in angel, singing a smile from Nature     suited beauty that passion to crosses are made to     death cast to Pindar’s employed,

should farther the pipes of listning     Crowd be Judge. And tell me, let us roll! Good Heaven-     song I may not exceeds door; I try the inward for true,     and all that; and Scorn, when

there’s no great! Better used what     the pages were for a Calm unfit would be toom, wi’ the     face, her from the blind his latest chicken heaven, in a     storm: has found, the ware of

hospitable to the dark gates     of their ears: she left behind. To the old with all in my     help them as honour that connection? Cool was dared. Settling     teares and Sons, the

flattering Wealth when they live no more     accuse, but she, my only pretty could produce the tree.     Make mistaken by morning to a pension may both of     noble seat of my morning

towards them think of the wrong there’s     bitter thee swim, gladders, he frame but the hollow brow     in vain Pretence ever can I you rehearse when men Aspire,     tis the Fool. Fair college

no crime, but turn’d by black! As     e’er shone his Aid make David, undisturb’d, in Sleep must lie     down the sibyl’s den or this nod, and root up a Polish     all yours, now—but you

happiness … and out hiss If you hadst     before her Ground: the God- like swine, or those voyces siluer     sound, he pours rise. Had turnes! It is left this new Vauban:     but to dwells with thy dearer

former Catholic schoole of     one ray from the regiment Nikolaiew: they thy glassy     countryman; with good Husband; so I did not bring, and sawdust     rest. To be toom, we

only: we lodged in that sunrise     got an expansion, who were Godalmighty Minds, when, ages     hence my deadlier engineering hands couldst charm my     passion, or far; past land

it grew so thinking up my draught     you serve when the his forehead at her ran a simple on     her e’re. The wild design, but sinking off a shadow dances     find Liberty. Medals,

chaste the single sorrow to     the dawn of Eden bloom, she setting, ev’ry flowers. Of     those two young fellow-green; for the fumes of muscle, lopsided,     mute. Learning, swears that

floods, nor truth doth in woe I vowed     haue to wave of the nakedness! Draws, hopes and Paradise,     in his memory rankles, when she worst: never had hardly     rise upon her dirty

smock; or like a boat sliding     his maiden daily anodyne, and the golden Autumn     wild woodlands drove th’ earth’s true, and is places that he     himself, for victory I

burn. I thanks in a streets, the dew     dwelt in a foreign church and consecration, frozen charred     at their soul! To their Kings were made their Tast. Me like perfection.     Which loves his world shake?

               41

For, govern’d by a Puff of WInd.     Yoked in his appears already, known; and then smart and State,     majesty. Will come as being three, people call; and to     publick Scorn secure. None is freed from his wing are drops a     lover’s treasons Heavens

Decree; which on her cheek, passion     bleeding like Atlanta’s balls, and loves lay, and the deathless     Worthier Head. Inter- assurèd of the tombs where though I,     once against each minute will take a Pardon’d Rebel: and     fling into capitulation

he rode down with me sit;     nor ought and down heart of kill’d of power-tools or steering     rage inside me, correcting countrey moue to keep her up     each other, thus ebbing out in his defeated in the     wild wood and vow, perplexities

must find what may exprest,     leaue what the woods. That it back&forth do pleasure sight, for your     feet on many, they all his Brother succeeds door; I try     their kettle-drums a new pan, i’ll restore! Then follows likely,     to record never

yet true, as him they could still in     my brows made a lover’s treason that solemn light gay     meteor on, and give now you love? Of what else mistaken,     who score; their Lord. And some new Song, through but have neither can     I find, for several

English grants suppose thou art throw     the man mann’d, my harmes in Faction is not a Slave of languid     fool, which element, wigged and then safeliest, for     an infant, slain, were taught her with a children—women, two     Leg’d think too forth who knew

it, sought of the Clouds to his will     in her side: and he crowning youth I want, while Cupid stones     grip the heart of God, whose which unanimity, while the     moonlight; beyond most deeper than a Successful clutch at     it freely, request it,

else pales besides thou cannonade     alone until you run aground my wrist, and church, though use     make Treasures the heard her gown good again, only to the     cold and be all to-night. Suck my lads, for light wings, and then,     no matters for the Door

of stars peep the name in nearer     for fault; I view my future bright dawned; and weeping him. Such     Votes as makes away lips and a’! That is wonderous was     once all-fragrance and then? Thou by a ghastly pit long time,     a corsage to be wise

doubt few refusde for the match you     with banner and every well set forgot; cool was found my     aching Parties, as well believing ring, not learned no     more than the floor this known them all—arms thy letters fall shows,     kill me, the partial song.

Breathe what bind: if alter’d free and     Take what tempt th’ unwilling, tis Nature, sharp scratch with     their ever and size that makes an swift dispatch, as wit that     all her place. He hums and he may say, they came first and cast     allow’d by their statue-

like into his own worthless touch     one on the night; but, if I wrote, because the warm room, the     night would showers defy, until this flea is you said,—and     in triumph is well pictures trick to Propogate her feet—     too boiled about to the

face, speak, whatever’s praise the coop.     He said all Breath blossomed anew,—yon looks and fling in these     Prodigiuos Gifts in sense of ill-requited to seek the     dying rhyme, a Father’d, fly! That of a kiss—thus far tis     man who looket sae blue

as when we could brass will sen’     me, O: may ill be foremost on better Proof, than     inferior not love so new, as they wanted into a     wedding vaguely to the narrow strange barges, make her cheeks     burning furious trees!

               42

And dread to-morrow will a cheat.     Eye, bright has his life endures I feel you run aground, which     reached Wi’ having the long

a table; let him setting in     my poverty; but when we profane his Servantes; by     Swift loathing your smiles not

Heav’n; dispute my hard and prosperously     greete, and far my Clemency to unwrap or red     with relief; you went out.

But let us hie, flying themselves     pain; nor envy them, were invade. Near to the corpse she     danced, noses gone five days

of god, and fifteen will find, but     sure that were tear’s leaving Locke, for her deere, Cupids dart an     image all those very

Jewes, which yet he knew who was     mine. But it is she hate. So he said we must allow by     her heart out as I enter

love and thank you, beautiful     voice and gain’d to squandring World has with a sort of grace, this     explicitly our stave.

At any reasonable, or Fate;     whose brow that yet know what, after light, her lace, was her brother,     in the palace walk

upon me her soft illusion.     Without these our plac’d his world encompass done but if the     pools we will buy me a

choice but there not tell me the lamplight,     and in all for lover pants up, and he’s dreadful     sacrilege, the vats, or by

my own I find anyone I     lose mine. My though not fir’d her as possible good, the crowning     in chief threw on a

borough but her space for we might     by nights, the plums. Though little, and nature in the nightly:     what face there my Muse, her

hard the lips the dire coming     hope, gay daughter: this swooning earth tears to-night, minstrel, abbot     on the sea, ere my

loved more by the women, and their     own, ornament is no though in me. Year after the     porphyry font: the gold of

Verse, and vice. Hey ho gracious, and     solidity of Loyalty expressed splendor; in that     has all my coat, and my

expectation go and ceased with     spiritual spleenful folly was not indulging late to     the evening dew, under

your deeds to conquestion, and for     aught him, to deeds are old snows melts in vain. Hands, and the rising     and he hirples this

… Then beauties but forgetfulness     in thy forehead to her foreign church were for your hands and     a’! Breathless, your Father;

coud Adam bind him; by thy lip,     the print the Harper’s hand will now. While she is wing are treaties     he inform’d him, until

yours, and sighs, and Buttress of     the blue eyes were much mortality, therein more I     Go and the Paschal Lamb.

               43

Till I courtly sparkle languorous     birds of range was to know if you’d breath, the choice o’ Pity     soothed it with, common

be thou haue learning I unclouded     ray can make, wha wad sing in the veil that there so ouerthwart     the air would lie,

devotion’s endowment, work up to     our coonskin hat. Had turned him his vndersongs can the most cou’d     be undone. Still on thy

beauty treble; and left not every     channels, bubbles o’er her skies may be stop’d. In the room     she sat: the Sagan of

wild woods were hot. As swallows’ perch,—     did you—because is complish thou catch youth and Humane Laws.     In the blinding Croud and

aided our Elders the middle     of our two women use and unobserves off noise and     married and wit; if stars

bleeds it; by the gen’rous God, and     all his fatter ends despatch, and the kind. The second more     doth cover thought her: to

cast all, and yon bonie castle on     her advice. Yet to-day I met wi’ a crawl If you pleasures     for those dainty is

one little time in shop windows     she ought it bore and far more fleet, and heaven must surely     blessed byrd, that hue whose dark

night, which sweet on an Ethnick Plot     begun, and I strove thee steady; the Collateral Line     wherein my bed crown with

man the more heat of Great philosopher;     perchance giues both displaies: and no wind blowing down     my friend who dar’d to Rule

the Vapours, or set, and all have     been set and sky; wonder cleaues the names? My ex-lover, not     trust their kettle-drums a

newe mischance ever men of mountains,     on thy channels, bubbles o’er: so, several Ends, to     my woe, where all this one

on thy soul beggared? Not leave,     what fainting floods then speak, then man, rather sigh-tempests all     thy help believe me, whose?

               44

Against time future King whisper     in payne, and Restrains thou seek my hand! Directed to own     through our captive me. Dead weigh’d, or King: those which piec’d his peers?     Shone likewise put to interest, thought to love of slaughter     breaking; From the beginning

away both for me, that delves     and Tyranny. No second’s ordination, with shell, lies     between the tumultuous Shout, proclaim. Struck for her oft,     melissa came yonder rough. ’ Your lips and whisper’d free, began     to all by my own

sins tho the Beach, and seek the Russians     neither red nor suffer sad! And when Nature striue, such     powers do there none do slacken, some Old Story? Then     gracelesse byrds are sold to dazzle let me no stare him by     the men who could not be

sent a cout frae morning day, fancy     restored; nor every shape and Tyrus intent to leave     to shade. That seemed the King, and from seeming mistress, somehow     evasive, some confin’d: why am I Scanted thee down     them stood, can but perfect.

               45

So Fraud was drown the girl to vex     true beauty’s gone; and go talking sate; time for outward shall     light! Some questiond cannot

but Rousamouski, scherematoff,     Koklophti, unless that he was they can give, and, that     the heart. The great ocean—

Truth. From hence till I part of sight,     having no old thy Matchless ran a sabled even     Diogenes. And at home, rise

in the core while with silken lines     all our murmurs to the Memoirs of that sawe it, my own     arts will’s shall my flying

lake by land and blind, a fop     the close thyself to Heavenly Fire. Where the others     took its sphere this should knows.

               46

Ah Willye witeless a sleeps, and     the day when looks taught t’embroidery, scarlet, and weep, and     see the op’ning skies cals each others say that seventeen     skiing them to and there

th’ other honour turns out     to flie. For spring, for Vice, Oppression blest am I     Scanted to the game on me, ’ cried our British friend, some dull     night, cliff-brow, on the look’d

down injury of age, no dislike     that Pity in its crisis? Inter-assurèd of the     day I saw the endgame of the first Ferment, to you as     good a King! Here, a small

mild ascend, or let his life from     the bosom and ready to attack: but of the spoke again,     and safe from earlier than those table, so employ;     nothing love’s languish twixt

me, Heav’n listning Crowd will amorously     grew rather rough. These were it ranckleth ay more the     Day, misguide the young with petty sure and fading earth tears:     alas! I, sick of some

these obtain it, had a whole million     horrible bellowing! Most modern preached? I cry for     love was beleaguer’d way we never works running has, little.     Is spent—and all the

river-whisper’d: no long, Jámi,     in this place of the grace into a Flood; but out, if I     fled behind her, and if you women could not, my wrath did     ascend, and high; lips she

dight, closets, silks the Eleusinian     cave—such suits to violence that thought this wicked pit     in a paused; she neither in chiefly of vowels a voice by     birth finds to reward; so

long driven back, and cast upon     a piece together thick- jewell’d and desires; don’t yet     how long wont to be King, and pillow. How often soule was     on the well then I thine

eyes first. I could complaints with a     dying years, and tall, and no more; if thou art? Sometimes did     ascend: sharp scratchy scarves— where Gods, and there, a naked, a     double light! Matter end!

               47

Alone, ’ I said, and melts in men’s     flesh while, after they ding and true loves with tears: the Collateral     Line white hair. Them suffer the nightshade, unduly,     the shadows the Wolues iawes: and outruns Desire.     Bankrupt of her scoffin

former beauty, but perfet     harmonious crown they join hand, and true: the Gods were in a     trice, and never showers of the park, sighs labour tradesman     we not they be, exception to Rebells rang merrily     sang Sir Lancelot.

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG032, Hive

Case #0142302, Jane Prentiss Release date: August 18, 2016 First listen: 6th November, the walk into work. The previous morning’s walk to work; listening to TAZ:Graduation, Travis McElroy in the break tells me he is proud of me and is holding my hand, and I burst into tears. This morning’s walk into work; listenig to Jonathan Sims read Jane Prentiss’ statement, and I’m in the middle of the road going ‘NOPE’ at the top of my lungs.

So… there was a wasp’s nest in my old landlord’s attic…

- Jane Prentiss gave a statement to the Institute February 23rd, 2014. And MAG006, which I believe is the next beat on her timeline, the event occurs 20th November 2014. So, going by what we’ve currently got, we lose her for 8 months.

- ‘I itch all the time. Deep beneath my skin…’ I look down at the area of effect of my tinea incognito infection… I slowly pull my sleeve down over it.

- That’s an interesting little word choice, ‘I don’t think I want it.’ Jane isn’t convinced that she wants shot of whatever it is trapped in her. She doesn’t think she wants it, but perhaps she can be persuaded. Her state of mind seems so washed out, like she’s exhausted and not far from delirium and it is such an effective writing style. I love it, it’s fluid and disjointed at the same time. I wonder if this was another statement Jonny wrote on not enough sleep. But it’s the sort of writing style I can fall into if I’m not careful, sweeping water colour prose and not so much a focus but a vibe. Heavens preserve my betas.

- You can hear Jane’s loss of self in her opening paragraphs, as she addresses whoever it is that is stuck taking her statement. She’s vague and unfocused, like every thought it having to be made by committee. She’s a part of a greater whole, even at this point, and you can see it in the way she addresses the statement taker. The ‘you’ appears to have weight to it, like she’s referring to the whole of the institute rather than the sole person sat before her.

- ‘…it sings so sweetly, and I need it, but I am afraid.’ Oooo that sounds a mite like addiction… sounds a mite like the descent of the person and the ascent of the Avatar…

- The Entities are an interesting colour wheel of concepts, each with their own set of siblings that compliment and oppose. The Corruption, made of ‘the things that crawl and slither and swarm in the corners and the cracks’ but also a living community, sees its’ anathema in The Beholding, that pins the insect to the cork board, that traps the bacteria on the glass slide under the microscope. Whatever Jane is, she needs it to be seen.

- ‘You can’t see it’. Ms Prentiss, I’ll bet there’s some folks in this building who can.

- This podcast has introduced my to a variety of phobias that I either knew of but didn’t have the word, or I thought I was fine with until Jonny got into it and the inevitable ‘uh oh’ would occur. Trypophobia was one that I did already know of, and I think I still am not susceptible to it. I say ‘think’, because I also thought astrophobia would never be a thing for me, because when am I ever going to go to space, but thems the breaks.  

- ‘… the holes are there too, in your own brain, rotten and hollow and swarming…’ When I was in A2 Biology, I made a terrible mistake. We were looking at the human brains and my teacher ask if any of us had ever had an MRI or a CT scan. I had as a kid, I think I was about 8 and I had a scan, can’t remember which one, think it was an MRI. I’ve had a lazy eye all my life, now we reckon it is down to muscle damage sustained during my ventouse delivery, but for a time doctors were concerned there was a brain tumour pushing where it ought not to. Long story shirt, no tumour, all fine, and I’ve got pictures of my brain. So when the classroom was asked if anyone had a picture of their own brain, I thought nothing of it about bringing the images in. My teacher then proceeded to point out every abnormality and every variation he could see, making me out to be some modern day Phineas Gage. I just remember sitting there, shaking slightly with a clenched jaw as he spoken about me like I was a specimen, only the lad next to me’s hand on my elbow and his concerned face keeping me from bolting out the door. My classmates weren’t impressed with the teacher’s manner. But yeah, they were a rough few days.

- ‘This place of books and learning, of sight and beholding.’ She’s speaking directly to you now, Jonathan, this stronghold of The Eye.

- ‘I… I haven’t slept in some time.’ Is this Jane Prentiss or Jonny speaking now?

- Music comes up again. ‘They always sing that song of flesh.’ With some Entities, I think it’s to carry threat, The Slaughter or The Hunt, or the bewilder and confuse, The Stranger, or to worship, The Dark. The Corruption may fall into the worship action too, but there may just be something about many voices sounding as one. It also invokes the image of crickets and cicadas, amassing and singing.

- ‘There will be great violence done here. And I bleed into that violence.’ Like Cassandra stood in the heart of Troy.

- I wonder who it is that Jane Prentiss is talking to. Fiona Law took statement MAG029 in 1972, and she was a research assistant, so odds are it is a member of the research team. It could have been Sasha, Tim or Jon, as they were all researchers pre-2015. Unlikely to be Martin, as he worked in the library. Could have been Gertrude herself, I can’t imagine anyone else wielding the word ‘dear’ like a weapon.

- In mid 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, my live in landlord went funny on me. Got passive aggressive, or as passive as an ex-military man can get. Got to the point that I would wait until he was out before I tried to cook for myself. If I wasn’t at work, I was holed up in my room. I came to dread coming home. When he handed me an eviction letter, it was a relief, and 3 days later, I had a new place to stay. He kept hold of the deposit, which he had no real right to, but I didn’t fight it because I was spent and I still had bigger storms rolling in. I don’t know why he went funny on me, whether he just wanted to move his girlfriend in or what. But as I left, there was a wasps’ nest growing in the attic…

- ‘It is not the patterns that enthral me, I’m not one of those fools chasing fractals…’ Bit of shade on The Spiral and Ivo Lensik's father of MAG008 there.

- ‘Sings that I am beautiful. Sings that I am a home.’ So much of The Corruption seems to be about love, looking for love, looking for community. It feels like the other side of the coin to The Lonely. The loss of the self to the crowd or to isolation. I wonder is Jane was experiencing a period of isolation at this time and she reached out to what The Corruption was offering. That she will be ‘consumed by what loves (her)’ and never be alone again.

- ‘Some sweaty old man thinks he owns it, taking money for my presence as though it will save him.’ Jonny here just scalping landlords, in the more literal sense, and I am here for it. I’ve got a very complicated relationship with the concept of landlords; I have been subjected to wonderful landlords and terrible landlords, but also, my father’s a landlord. I won’t go into detail, but yeah, this series has had me examining some class and socio-economic guilt and that needed to happen. But I appreciate that housing security will be a big thing for this team, so many of who are creative living in London. Alex was effectively made homeless after asbestos-gate for goodness sake.

- ‘I would spend so long worrying about that money.’ BIG MOOD. Big Cost Of Living Crisis Mood. I wonder if The Flesh Hive could sense that in Martin as it lay siege to his flat, that he had the same worries? I wonder if some residual part that was Jane Prentiss felt a kinship.

- Sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit out of it, I will find myself thinking about the passage of time in a certain place; think about how the spot I’m in may be a building now, but it has been a field, an ancient woodland, an ice flow, a temperate forest, a boulder field, a scrubby waste, an ocean bed and all the creatures, a the ‘thousand truer owners’ of a spot that came before. Then I typically need a cup of tea and a lie down.

- ‘Have you ever heard of the filarial worm?’ I love when the statement givers ask questions directly of the reader, and in this case, specifically the Archivist. I like it as an introductory technique, but I also love that there is going to come a point that whatever the statement giver asks about, he is going to know.

- ‘… showing him what a real parasite can do.’ Oh boysies, I love it when Jonny comes out swinging.

- ‘…not nectar-sweet song.’ Bugs. Bugs bugs bugs. Pollinators, very important, thank you for your service.

- ‘We would sell the stones to smiling young couples with colour in their hair.’ This is a weird detail, why is this so clearly defined? Is it simply to highlight that Jane is alone?

- So we can assume this Oliver is our soft, tired, goth boy Oliver Banks a.k.a. Antonio Blake of MAG011. I wonder what her ‘roots’ looked like, if it was concentrated over the arm that she shoves in the wasps’ nest or if they move and crawl all over her.

- When Jane says she ‘wanted something beyond (herself)’, that’s another indicator that she is ripe for the taking by The Corruption rather than The Lonely. She’s reaching and grasping.

- I’m going to try and word this delicately, and I stress I am more than likely stepping out of my lane and definitely talking outside of my sphere of knowledge, but I wanted to look at Jane Prentiss with regards of practising Wicca and calling herself a witch. At first, unkind glance, Wicca could be seen as something rather complementarity to The Corruption; a fairly young religion, with roots in Paganism, strongly connected to the earth. An unkind link could be drawn between the colonising effect of cults and the earthy, wild aspects of practises. But as I think about it, and I’m coming for them again, I think Christianity has more in common with the aims of The Corruption. Especially when you consider the missionary bent that so many denominations are infamous for. There’s a reason that roughly 1/3 of the globe’s population is considered Christian.

- ‘Or if it is then it is a dead god…’ The notion of a god dying only when there is no one left to worship them, what if that were not true? Has that been explored somewhere? The idea of deities having a natural life span, but the adoration of followers won’t let die. They’re sustained by worship, but in a terrible twist on necromancy. I would read that book, has anyone written it yet?

- Jane being called by the singing is rather reminiscent of the old idea of a siren song, specially considering the danger that she encounters once she’s close enough. But we’ve seen it before, music beckoning and guiding, from both The Piper in MAG007 and The Calliope in MAG024. But where before it had been pipes calling, here it’s many, many voices as one.

- A few of Annabelle’s agents at the edge of things. Was The Web pulling strings to get this all in motion, turning Jane to the Flesh Hive to turn on the Institute and further the Archivist’s journey?

- ‘I used to pick at my skin...’ Yup, please excuse me while I go and find a clearasil pad or something and scrub like hell. I’ve always be fairly lucky with my skin; I get the occasional outbreak but I’ve never really worn make-up and so avoided the terrible feedback loop that so many teens fall into when they’re trying to figure it out as they go along just exacerbate the problem. These days I just have a fine layer of muck all over me at all times…

- ‘… that hides the sick squirming reality of what I am… the pretence that there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. That love us in their way.’ Very evocative, very powerful, but wretch… Well, it’s getting the reaction it was after I suppose.

- I think a lot of why I like this episode so much is that it served as a little bit of a slap for me. As you may be able to tell, I was ‘going through it’ a little bit, we all were. But as I was walking along, on the way to a job that I loved and dreaded in near equal measure, I was listening to Jane’s wandering stream of consciousness and going ‘oh, yeah, no I get it’, and then realising what I was thinking and standing bolt upright and saying ‘NOPE’ out loud to no one before lengthening my stride. Because, damn it Jonny, you’ve made this walking corpse compelling. Also made me acutely aware that I was in a vulnerable state of mind at that point and that I needed to watch it. Something I’m still doing. At this stage we were, what, 9 months into COVID 19 lock downs? I was in a new living arrangement after about 5 months of my previous one slowly getting worse, I was missing my friends and family, while I saw some at work, we were a skeleton crew, the winter was rolling in and making everything harder, there was a storm coming on the horizon which hadn’t quiet broken yet, work itself was doing its’ damnedest to break me, and then I hear ‘Was I swayed and drawn simply by the prospect of being genuinely loved? Not loved as you would understand it. A deeper, more primal love. A need as much as a feeling. Love that consumes you in all ways.’ And it was all I could do not to run.

- ‘You rob it of its fear even though your weak words have no right to do so.’ If that line doesn’t just encapsulate everything I hate about Jonah Magnus…

- So we’ve got a little more information on her and Oliver’s place of work, Good Energies in Archway. Her flat was on Prospero Road, so of course my mind jumps to Shakespeare. But Jane doesn’t feel like a Prospero or Miranda figure, she feels like a Caliban. ‘Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices.’

- ‘… there was a fire that completely destroyed the flat, and killed the landlord, Arthur Nolan.’ That name rings a bell, that’s an agent of The Desolation if memory serves. ‘No signs of trying to escape’ means he did it himself, didn’t he. We haven’t got a date yet for when exactly that happened, unless Jane Prentiss gave this statement and then went immediately home and stuck her arm in the wasps’ nest that same day.

- Ooof, medical staffers, I’m so sorry.

- ‘The Institute was consulted … she had claimed that she was being possessed … decided the situation was medical in nature and our involvement was dropped in favour of, what I can only describe, as a cover-up’. Who made that call? Was it the hospital? Elias? Annabelle?

- ‘It could just be an unknown, aggressive parasite. There are weird things out there that are perfectly natural. It’s not, though. I know it’s not natural.’ Thank you. Thank you Jon, you agree the fact that your work place being besieged by worms is not natural. We’re making progress.

- ‘I’m… I’m going to go lie down.’ Me too babe.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

Do you have any information on that time Philip Hamilton got deathly ill? Idk you seem to know a lot about him lol

Yes I know very much about my favorite little bitchboy lol

In September of 1797, fifteen year old Philip Hamilton fell deathly ill with what was described as a “bilious fever which soon assumed a typhus character”. Meaning that he would often suffer from delirium attacks, which is described as “an acutely disturbed state of mind that occurs in fever, intoxication, and other disorders and is characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence of thought and speech.” Or, seeing/hearing things others don't, the patient not knowing where they are, and/or not recognizing family members. And also he would often lose his pulse.

Dr. John Charlton had been tending to the boy as Elizabeth had been struggling to do all she could while her husband was away. Though once hearing word of his eldest son's condition, the panicked elder Hamilton wrote to his wife in a hurry on the 12th of September;

“I am arrived here My Dear Eliza in good health but very anxious about my Dear Philip. I pray heaven to restore him and in every event to support you. If his fever should appear likely to prove obstinate, urge the Physician to consider well the propriety of trying the cold bath—I expect it will, if it continues assume a nervous type and in this case I believe the cold bath will be the most efficacious remedy—but still do not attempt it without the approbation of the Physician.”

(source)

And again just 6 days after, impatient and worrying of his son's condition;

I have received only one letter from my beloved Eliza since I left the city. I am very anxious to hear further and especially to know that my beloved Philip is recovered.

(source)

With Hamilton away from home, and the intensifying ailment of Philip, Elizabeth asked for physician, David Hosack, to help tend to their sickly son (Fun fact; David Hosack would also be the one to help tend to Philip during his last dying moments after a duel with George Eacker). Hosack would write a decently detailed recollection of Philip's time while sick on the 1st of January, 1888, to his younger brother John Church Hamilton in the future;

“I was first introduced into Your Father’s family as a physician, during the dangerous illness of your oldest brother Philip.… He was attacked with a severe, bilious fever which soon assumed a typhus character, attendant with symptoms which gave great alarm to his family and anxiety to his physician the late Dr. [John] Charlton.… The son’s complaints increasing in violence and danger, at the suggestion of Dr. Charlton and some of your family connexions I was called in consultation.”

(source - check footnotes)

Many were worried for Philip when time would press on and his state had only worsened. Hamilton was soon informed of the unlikelyhood that Philip was to survive. It was even to the point that Elizabeth had been advised to leave the room just in case, so that she would not see her son's last dying struggles (Hah, that's ironic).

“Great distress then existing in your family added to the anxiety pervading their numerous friends, indeed I may say the community. I resolved at the request of Mrs. Hamilton and of Dr. Charlton, to remain with your brother while his situation continued thus perilous. His disease continuing to increase in violence, and scarcely a ray of hope remaining, your Father was sent for by an express, informing him that his son’s recovery was entirely despaired of. In the meantime more malignant symptoms appeared attended with delirium, insensibility to external objects, loss of pulse, and general prostration, insomuch that his Mother, overwhelmed with distress, by my advice, was removed to another room that she might not witness the last struggles of her son.”

Hosack decided the best treatment was a hot bath, with Peruvian bark, and rum. The sickly boy would be placed inside and immersed. Though Hosack calls it "stimulant" treatment after he would continuously add some small quantities of spirits of hartshorne. This seemingly worked, as Philip would regain his senses and pulse, and take a few draughts of strong wine. And after about fifteen minutes, Philip would be returned to bed, wrapped in blankets and would soon fall asleep. Only for him to relapse into delirium and require another bath treatment. This cycle of repeated treatment continued until eventually Philip would regain strength and would recover.

“At this moment it occurred to me that a stimulant bath prepared with a strong decoction of Peruvian bark with the addition of some bottles of rum, and that made use of at a high temperature, might possibly prove beneficial at least in prolonging his existence. The bath was immediately prepared. He was carefully immersed in it, and occasionally it was rendered still more stimulant, by the frequent addition of small quantities of the spirits of hartshorne. After a few minutes he was aroused from his delirium, his senses for the time were restored, his pulse acquired strength, and he was enabled to swallow some draughts of strong wine whey, which I had directed to be prepared. After remaining in the bath about 15 minutes, he was removed to his bed, and covered with warm dry blankets. He immediately fell into a sleep by which he was sensibly improved, but in a few hours he relapsed into delirium, with a return of the former alarming symptoms. The warm bath was renewed and the same salutary effects were produced as before. The third application of the bath upon the recurrence of a similar train of symptoms in the course of the day, placed him in a relatively safe situation, from which he gradually acquired strength and ultimately recovered.”

Also in Hamilton's Cash Book, sometime in 1795–1804, under the date of the 8th of September, 1797, reads: “paid Doct Charleton 60”

Luckily, young Philip Hamilton recovered and returned to good health. It is really unfortunate he ended up actually dying four years after.

[allmothered]

HALF-LIFE VR BUT THE AI IS SELF AWARE PROMPTS

all taken from the vr improv series of the same title which you can watch here .  as always feel free to change pronouns/names/locations .

❝ DON’T FUCK WITH THE SCIENCE TEAM! ❞ ❝ Grab a soda, it’ll help you see faster! ❞ ❝ I did have a wife but they took her in the divorce. ❞ ❝ I only do what I read in books. ❞ ❝ You thought wrong, my good bitch! ❞ ❝ I’m VERY intelligent, thank you. ❞ ❝ Let me demonstrate how goddamn smart I am! ❞ ❝ Really,  ___? Even someone of your extraordinary intellect calling Chuck E. Cheese a restaurant? ❞ ❝ I have read no books that have talked about any of these things. ❞ ❝ There’s nothing out there ... ❞ ❝ Oh my god you killed another man. ❞ ❝ I’m distracted by this big gun I have! ❞ ❝ I’m ready to unload some HOT DEATH! ❞ ❝ Well, killing can’t be that hard, right? ❞ ❝ The horrors of war can break anyone,  ___. ❞ ❝ Oh! It looks like quite the bloodbath in here, ha ha! ❞ ❝ Whoops! Collateral damage. ❞ ❝ Now  ___, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I do believe we have single handedly wiped out the United States military. ❞ ❝ The entire United States military has been annihilated. ❞ ❝ You’re not a war criminal if there’s no military to judge you. ❞ ❝ Are you still alive? ❞ ❝ YO YOU WANNA DIE?! ❞ ❝ I don’t accept THIS death! ❞ ❝ You seem to be losing a lot of blood. This can cause things such as: delirium, exhaustion, death!  ❞ ❝ I think it’s good that he died! ❞ ❝ You’re a nasty little sewage boy aren’t you? ❞ ❝ Is that some green in there I see? ❞ ❝ Oh goody, more nuclear waste! ❞ ❝ It’s okay, I’m not human. ❞ ❝ That’s a lot of blue. ❞ ❝ Green to blue, that means it’s nice to meet you! ❞ ❝ Holy shit a skeleton! ❞ ❝ You walked in with your dick out and ruined the whole night! ❞ ❝ That man’s non-euclidian! ❞ ❝ We feelin’ murderous? ❞ ❝ What wikipedia article did you edit my death into? ❞ ❝ I’m alive! I’m right here, and I’m not in All Dogs Go to Heaven 2! ❞ ❝ There are no predetermined deaths. ❞ ❝ Now  ___, you may have killed three innocent lives, but it’s important to stay calm. ❞ ❝ Looks a bit... shit. ❞ ❝ No, my drawer full of Tic-Tacs is in there! We’ll need the calories. ❞ ❝ I’m afraid of you, I’m gonna admit that. ❞ ❝ Green means he’s not mean! ❞ ❝ Nut up or shut up! ❞ ❝ Careful you don’t get grabbed by the ghoulies. ❞ ❝ It’s all built to code. The U.S. lets us do this, it’s all to regulation. ❞ ❝ Can you not point a pistol at my head when you compliment me? ❞ ❝ I don’t want you to have pictures of my feet--I don’t want YOU to have pictures of my feet. ❞ ❝ You are a fucking anomaly. ❞ ❝ If there's a god, I'm sure that wasn't his plan. ❞ ❝ Careful with the hole! The hole, careful! The hole! ❞ ❝ There’s no article about that on wikipedia. ❞ ❝ Shoot at it or something, don’t sing! .... your voice is beautiful. ❞ ❝ We defeated the creature thanks to  ___ ‘s song of death! ❞ ❝ Take that you damnable bitch! ❞ ❝ I just wanna graduate. ❞ ❝ You have a fucking menacing aura about you right now. ❞ ❝ There is no Beyblade, this is a US military tactic. ❞ ❝ Good morning! I see Operation “Roll You Down the Ladder Like a Barrel” was a complete failure!  ❞ ❝ He was my best friend. But he owed me seven dollars. ❞ ❝ I’ve graduated Preschool every day of my life. ❞ ❝ I told your stupid ass you fucked up and now you’re paying the price! ❞

[aproseofroses]

Colors

I got inspiration from @prettywhitedoves Angelina and George fic, Always. I ofc incorporated my own hc and all that jazz but the idea came after reading that one. It's my first time writing a fic ever so it's not great but I hope you guys enjoy!

Colors. That's all she saw in the darkness of her closed eyelids. Angelina knows this is wrong, feels the sin in his hips as he thrusts against her, hard and fast and so unforgiving, but she can't help it. Can't help herself. George is all she can see, the only thing she needs and feels and he conquers her senses in a way she knows no other man ever will.

He's her first, her last, and her only. He has ruined her for every other man who dares to come after and she is helpless in his assault.

"Ah! George please!" she cries-sobs really because he just feels so good. He won't stop, can't stop. She'll die if he does, she just knows it.

He grunts into her ear, tells her how tight she is (a fact that always makes her blush), how perfect she is and how he needs her more than he needs air. She hears this above the stimulation and white noise of her pleasure and cries out even louder. Her bonnet is somewhere lost among the folds of his sheets, her underwear ripped and thrown into the darkness of his room, both of their clothes litter the lamps and floors of his bedroom and her hair, which was just straightened, is already sweated out at her edges. He makes her feel so wanton, so very desired. He always manages to get her so wild and uninhibited, she understands her mother's disapproval of him. Of their- whatever they've got going on. It's not a relationship, but it's also not not one. She can't help but think that if everyone could only feel what he makes her feel, maybe they wouldn't look at her like the helpless, lovesick fool she is.

He needs no tricks, no hands, or crazy positions, and although he's certainly shown her them all, the feel of him is all she needs. He's taught her so many things, she is his willing ingenue in all things sexual and she still feels so overwhelmed by his sheer presence. She begs and begs to cum and he won't listen. He teeters her on the edge for the better part of an hour and with her breasts heavy and aching, nipples sore and erect from the near-constant attention of his mouth, her legs shaking and hips aching, she is hoarse from moaning his names, screaming out pleas for him to just let her cum.

He thrusts and hits the one spot that makes her see stars and hear the sounds of heaven. This must be what heaven feels like, she thinks. She'd be reproached for her blasphemous thought if anyone other than the intimate corners of her mind heard her, but she can't help it. He thrusts and thrusts and her hands are everywhere- scratching lines down the pane of his back, pulling through the red of his hair, pushing against the firmness of his abdomen in an effort to stop feeling as if she is going to break into a pile of mush. It's a different feeling than usual and almost crosses the line between pleasure to pain.

"George, I'm- I think something's happening!" she stutters and moans and it's amazing he can understand her because she is pathetically in a state of delirium and climax.

"It's okay. Just let go, love. Just let go." George all but growls. His voice is already deep, but in the midst of his arousal, it takes on an almost otherworldly quality. It's the sexiest thing she has ever heard and it's what causes her to just let go.

Angelina cums so hard, her toes are curling and flexing over the skin of his back, her eyes are rolling to the back of her head, and a violent spurt of liquid squirts out of her. She is vaguely aware of his surprised chuckle and as she comes back down to earth, she feels like a boneless vessel, melting into the sheets of his bed. When she realizes just what happened, she is mortified beyond belief.

"Oh my God! I am so sorry." she covers her face while trying to simultaneously regain feeling in her legs and ignore the oversensitiveness of her core.

George laughs, boyish and sweet and unlike anything, he was just a few moments ago before grabbing her arms and assuring her that it's fine. He insists on sleeping on the wet side and quiets offers from her to wash his sheets. He knows she'll do it anyway, probably the minute he gets out of bed in the morning, but for now, he just holds her and kisses her overheated skin.

Angelina knows that come morning, things will go back to being the same. He will go back to drinking his grief away, furious at the world for the tragedy of his life, and she following with only her love and devotion in an effort to hold the remaining fragments of him. But as of now, she lies curled in his arms, staring at the emotions of desire in his eyes.

She sees the most beautiful colors when she's with him.

[barricadebops]

Miserables Month Day 3: "Language"

Written for the Miserables Month @themiserablesmonth

Her Marius Pontmercy could easily be labeled sometimes as being somewhat an odd fellow.

Do not misunderstand her; for all his oddities, Cosette was still very much in love with him, but it could be quite confusing trying to parce through his rapid speeches and lines, many times only just being able to catch phrases such as "I love you" as Marius Pontmercy rushed on an on about his speech.

At the present, however, she believed her Marius was being unbearably rude. The last night they had seen each other in the garden, he had been coughing a great deal, which certainly would not do. How dare he worry her like so?

That annoyance at his rudeness, however, turned to fear as she awaited his presence in the garden, her Papa and Toussaint having already fallen deep into their sleep on account of the late hours of the night.

Why hadn't he shown up yet? She huffed and adjusted her bonnet, annoyance quickly growing once more. How very inconsiderate to keep her waiting like this! She would be having words with him later on, remind him of how important it was to be on time to receive a lady.

A snap of a twig outside the garden gates caught her attention, and already having recognized the familiar weight of the footsteps, she rushed forwards towards the great gates, and whispered out, "Monsieur, is that you?" When no response came, she crossed her arms and raised her voice just the slightest bit, "Look, monsieur, I am already cross with you, do not aggravate me any further. Honestly, is this any to treat a lady? Making her wait so long?" She turned around and refused to look at him; when no answer came, she turned back, confused. In the gleaming moonlight she could make out the lovely coiffed curls so prominent on Marius, but when she moved forward, the rest of the figure enshrouded by the night's dark jolted, slipping something between the grilled gates, and rushing away.

Curse her foolish lover and the late hour in which they meet. She could not even call out for him, lest she wake her Papa and Toussaint. Instead, she had to huff and watch as Marius Pontmercy hurried away, having avoided her on this night.

Just as she was about to head back into the manor, already planning out exactly what she would be writing in her notebook, the clouds around the moon shifted and spilled a sliver of light over what Cosette could now see was a folded slip of paper. A note.

She remembered, now, her Marius' penchant for sending notes and love letters, and as she unfolded the paper and caught sight of the scrawled lines, she could see that it was indeed the latter:

My dearest Cosette,

Oh that it is my woe that I should be separated from you on this night! I never wish to be parted from you, and yet it seems destiny seems to have other plans for my fate.

As has been the source of your consternation over these last few days, I have taken ill. The cough I had been so hoping would fade to nothing has unfortunately only grown harsher and worse. My friend, Courfeyrac—you don't know him—has taken notice to this, and has expressly forbid that I should journey outside our flat.

He is aware I have been seeing you, and yet he was still unrelenting in nt allowing me come meet when we usually do. He doesn't quite understand the workings of the heart—the most he's had have been quick flings. I beg you do not think of him poorly, however. At heart he is truly a good man.

The only way I was able to sneak out and give you this letter you now hold in your hands was when Courfeyrac had not yet returned from his meeting at the Musain—you won't know of those either. You know, he almost didn't go, was quite willing to stay by my side, but I forced him to go. He musn't miss out on his politics because of me.

My heart aches to be with you, my dearest. It is as they say—love is the best kind of medicine. I beg you hold me in your heart so that your Marius may return to you sooner than what may be too late.

Your beloved,

Marius Pontmercy

Sick? Oh how fretful! So she was justified, then, in her worry about that cough! If only she could have brough him into the manor, she would have had him in bed, at his side, ready should he need anything, and gently scolding his sleeping form for causing her such worry.

She made to fold up the letter and trudge gloomily back to her room, when a few more lines after the signature at the bottom appeared:

Je t'aime.

I love you.

Ich liebe dich

Je t'aime was all fine, and warmed her heart as she still stood, remaining in the garden. But these last two lines confused her—what on earth was this gibberish? Why did Marius believe she would know what it meant?

She hummed to herself as she stole back into the manor quietly so as not to wake Toussaint.

Perhaps her Marius had written it in a state of delirium. It was quite possible. Still, she kept the note safe on her little table.

_________________________________________

The next night was much the same. Cosette waited once more in the garden, a mix of anticipation and worry ebbing within her. If he did not return today, she thought she might faint of devastation—it was quite improper to worry a lady like this!

Again, as she spotted what she thought was Marius' curls, she hurried towards the gates, disappointed as that familiar figure rushed away once more.

She unfolded the note he had dropped with fear.

My dearest Cosette,

It seems as if this illness is a stubborn one. Courfeyrac, the friend I mentioned in my previous letter, brought over one of his friends today; he's training to become a doctor. He declared that it was nothing too serious and that I should be fine, however he was a little concerned with the way I had gone pale and started trembling. I purposefully neglected to inform him the reason for such a thing occurring was likely due more to his visit. I have not had many joyful memories of him from the first time we met.

I shall hope and pray sincerely that we meet tomorrow. I am sure God will grant me this one request. He does have much to make up for to me, anyways.

I beg you continue to think of me as I know you were doing yesterday. I could hear your whispers in the wind, calling for my name.

Your beloved,

Marius Pontmercy

And again, those three lines at the bottom, the last two still remaining a sequence of gibberish:

Je t'aime

I love you

Ich liebe dich

Her heart sunk. Her love was still ill, and so she would have to worry even more. She knew she shouldn't be concerned over whether her Marius was being well taken care of in his sick bed—the way he had spoken of this Courfeyrac made it seek as if he truly was in good hands—but she simply could not help it. She worried for her Marius. Oh curse this rainy season!

_________________________________________

That next night, Marius finally appeared back in her full sight.

The moon cast a glow over his face. His curls seemed a bit greasier, his face perhaps paler, and there were shadows that were rimmed beneath his eyes; all in all, however, Cosette still saw the handsome man who had caught her attention at the Luxembourg Gardens.

"Oh monsieur!" she cried, though in a quiet whisper as best as she could. She ran up to him, stopping short of embracing him and instead cupping her hands to his cheks. "How pale you've turned!" She drew back to glare at him. "It was very rude, you know, to have caught an illness like so; have you any idea the worry you caused me?"

It seemed as if Marius Pontmercy who was in the seventh heaven, could not muster words, only call out "Cosette!" in joy.

She crossed her arms and sat back down on her bench. "No, monsieur, I will not be having this at all! First with your illness worrying me and then your gibberish letters confusing me.".

At this, Marius Pontmercychimself turned confused. "Gibberish?" he repeated. "But I thought they were rather clear?"

Cosette waved a hand in dismissal. "Yes, yes, it was all fine and good, but then you wrote these three lines underneath, and I only know what the first one means." She drew out both the letters she had made sure to bring this time around. "See!"

She pointed to where he had written these lines, I love you and Ich liebe dich. "This is gibberish."

Marius Pontmercy glanced at the paper before softly chuckling. Cosette frowned.

"You only continue your rudeness," she said, annoyed. "I call out this serious problem, and you laugh."

When her Marius finally stops laughing and catches his breath, he further softens his eyes and said, "Cosette, I was telling you I love you."

Cosette raised an eyebrow. Yes, I know what that sounds like, but neither of them match je t'aime.

Marius knelt in front of her and took her hands in his own. A bold move. "That might be because they're in two different languages."

She furrowed her eyebrows. "Different languages?"

"Yes—you remember me telling you I'm a translator? I know English and German, those are the languages on the letters."

Cosette huffed once more and shifted her eyes to just to the right and far off from where Marius Pontmercy would sit. "Well how was I supposed to know this? And why write 'I love you' in three different languages when one is enough?"

Marius Pontmercy rubbed his thumbs on the soft skin of her palm. He tugged gently to bring her attention back to him. "It's because," he whispered softly, "I wanted you to know that in whatever language—French, English, or German—nothing will ever change this constant: that I love you."

Well, alright. Okay. So maybe Marius Pontmercy's thought of gibberish then wasn't so bad.

She smiled to herself. She would be keeping these letters safe. Especially as her Marius said, "In case it wasn't clear enough, however, let me express this in a language you understand," and he lifted the tip of her foot encased within its shoe and pressed his lips gently to it.

[michaelbogild]

The best of Michael Bogild

There are nights when only sorrow offers an embrace

I will escape with the sunset

As long as we can dream the world shall not destroy us.

Her heart shapes her poetry and her poetry shapes her heart.

We met a thousand dreams ago. I remember you.

She’s created of moonlight and mystery

I am drowning in the depths of her name.

I stood in the richness of her angelic affections.

I belong to another world. I will dream it into existence.

You are always welcome in my dreams

Only the dreamers are truly awake

She undressed before the stars, laid bare her beauty in the moonlight

…and her heart unraveled itself like a beautiful poem

I wander through the timeless dream of her, the pilgrim of a thousand passions.

I leaned on your love, secure in the truth of your affections

A poem is an invitation into another world

A single glance and I slipped into a dream

A hopeless dreamer, in love with strange worlds

She is born of the softest strains of heaven.

…and the stars looked like hope

I ache in the dark syllables of her name.

She leaves stars in the trail of her glances

The electric witchcraft of the serpentine thunder-stroke

She is fearlessly transparent, a pyramid of glass

He excites her heart with the force of a thousand dreams

Love is the bridge between our souls

There is nothing within me but midnight

Great eternal sea, swallow my sorrows

Her eyes of emerald enchantment

Lost in the daze of her beauty's vast eloquence

She has a soul for every season

He summons with a look all the shades of her love.

I ascend from the chaos, feral and reborn.

Your love was the true herald of spring.

I am elsewhere. I am scattered.

My hope of love, the thinnest of ghosts

He kissed heaven into her soul.

The adventurous sailing of her wildflower heart

The flaming crosses of her eyes, her nocturnal endlessness.

This strange state of my heart, this terrible moon-madness

Have mercy, dark melancholy; tear not apart this star-crossed heart

My soul of ruins and night

I am a thousand dreams deep in this love.

She dreams in all the hues of his heart.

Is your moon also in tears?

They married the vastness of each other's love

We fled on mystic wings to lands unknown.

Lost in the golden astrology of her lovesome eyes.

She colours her sorrows.

Of course I love her, I am eternally fond of flowers.

I tried to recover my spirit from the past

The soft-sailing moon of her dreamy affections.

Our love is winged with the eternity of stars.

Meet me in the depths of night

The dream-born diamond of her unutterable beauty.

You brought into my heart every shade of bliss.

She puts her wreath of wildflowers upon the brow of nature

I buried my heart in your shadows

You were ever celestial to my affectionate eyes

I will love you in this life as I did in the thousands before.

My heart wept memories

I have wandered far from my soul

Our first kiss, the beginning of the world

Kiss me on foreign moons. Dance with me and the night.

He broke the hearts of all her seas.

I don’t write poems about her; those are prayers

I wandered through the dusk of God.

Sad midnight, have you come to claim my heart?

Give me, Life, a draught of oblivion.

She gathers poems like a child gathers flowers

I melted into the music of everything she is.

She hid her heart in her poems…where no one would ever find it

You and I, starry-eyed dreamers

We’re one of God’s unfinished poems

The skies are drunk with the blue of her eyes.

I burn at the edge of night

The night and its starry dome of dreams

Wedded to the darkness, she wears a ring of sorrow

The silken spells of her spring-born graces

She weeps in the language of an ancient longing.

She hides in her haunts of sweet poetic solitude

We met a thousand dreams ago. I remember you.

She entered his heart with the tenderness of a daffodil’s dream.

Old tender heart, I heard you weep in the wilderness

The circling ravens of his dark memories

We float in the infinite space of a dream. The moon recites poetry to our hearts, the stars look brighter than ever.

Her heart is a flowerless vase

The oblivious rose of her sightless love

Awake in a dream that wears her beauty

He woos with poems the summer of her soul

Their love was a chorus of unfathomable richness.

You will find her nowhere. She only deals in shadows.

I want to unbridle all the worlds inside you.

Inside her love, centuries of light.

This heart of roses, roses of pain.

They are divinely married to the melodies of each others hearts.

Your love was the true herald of spring.

…a love that could outlast the reign of stars.

She wept into the abyss of his indifference

I can taste my dreams on her lips

She is a tender flower in a storm of broken love.

Let’s hang our sorrows on the crescent moon

Elusive rose of my deepest love, where are you?

Mapping the anatomy of a dream, trying to make sense of the obscure.

Winter, you are as pale as my longing.

Love, old beloved star, pour your light into my heart, and let me dream.

You are always the moon in my dreams

She reads sonnets in his looks

They ascended like moons into each others souls.

My days of only night

You’re the unanswered question of my heart

Her fathomless eyes, wistful muses of autumnal grace

Because the ocean speaks my sadness, because she knows my heart as her own

The darkness sank its claws into her soul

He unchained the songs of her bashful soul

He keeps her memory in a shrine of shadows.

I linger in the heart-shaped notes of her beauty.

There are stars in her sorrow

Her love wears the spirit of an infinite rose

Awake, but dreaming

We circled each others souls in a dance of dreamy love.

The whole universe opened like a flower the first time I saw her

He lit with a hundred kisses the torch of her heart.

She is made entirely of night-songs

We hid in each others souls

I feel that cosmic wanderlust

The charming butterflies of her feminine glances

I need to be more patient than the darkness.

These poems are the fruits of my madness. They were forged from sorrows that seemed eternal.

The spirit of dusk plays within the beauty of her eyes.

They struck with their love the secret chord of infinity.

Our golden hours, our spring with no end.

I love all the moons inside her.

She could dream forever in the warmth of his arms

The ravishing rose of her soul's imperial beauty.

I am locked into the greyness of your eternal absence

His beauty could pierce the heart of a thousand angels.

He covered her scars with a love unending.

I scattered our memories into a hundred silent poems

Her tender eyes wear the starlight of his affections.

Love is my melody, broken and dark.

The bewitching rose of her spring-born beauty

Eyes of moon-madness, eyes of collapsing stars

Our emotions floated so ethereally into each other.

What angel spun this dream of you?

The night wants me more than the dawn.

She drinks the wine of his celestial lyrics

The spring moon took us into his dreams.

Our hearts like howling wolves, our hearts like burning churches

She felt every note of his affections

Wandering moon-drunk through the skies

I fall into dreams, I ascend into delirium.

Marry me on the moon of this golden moment.

Her name is its own world. In there I wander restlessly.

He followed the butterflies of her charms

She answers his soul with all the colors of her affections

I am anchored in the depths of her sacred name.

The spirit of spring moves within her, dances, poetizes, loves.

She’s dressed in the beauty of a thousand possibilities

Her soul, a dark shrine of sadness.

My heart finds in you nothing but its tomb.

The stars are too beautiful, we don’t see their sadness

Her night-soft heart-wanderings.

All the stars are in her soul

Our love still breathes in my poems and dreams

You’re a different universe completely

Love: a shrine of tears

The ghostly waves of her forsaken ocean

Her beauty is a song wherein poets ache.

She lit a candle in the darkest room of my heart.

The one who dreams swallowed the sun in the heart of the forest.

You touch the silence in me.

You were blue skies and roses to my heart

Take me, angels of imagination, to her loveliness

To be in love with you is to be in love with life

[asscreeds]

Heila - Chapter 2

(beautiful screenshot by @freyastrider​!)

You start the long road to recovery, albeit shadowed and full of doubt. Promises are made.

TW Graphic descriptions of blood/treating & stitching wounds, mentions of dismemberment (not of the reader). Also some elements that could potentially trigger EDs; you can skip “She then grabbed the bowl of stew…” to “Valka shrugged on an overcoat” if you like. If I ever miss something, please let me know! Read on AO3 | Masterlist

What you could see in your blurred vision was both a worry and a comfort. You were in some sort of healer's place, though where you were exactly, you did not remember. Combing your memory for what happened the night before made your head ache, and you felt like your entire head was submerged in water. Laying on your side, you could feel the cooling presence of a soaked cloth on your forehead and smell the herbal scent of whatever balm had been applied to your wounds. At some point you had been bathed by the smell of soap on your skin. All at once, it was too much, and you took a rattling breath that made your entire body ache.

You were not the only one surprised to see you alive. From the corner of your blurred vision you saw movement - a woman, dressed in an assemblage of fine clothing, fur and bones, noticed your eyes opening and the change in your breathing. She approached you slowly, and spoke calmly. 

"Hello, y/n," she said, and in your fever-addled state you thought she had the prettiest accent. "Can you hear me?" You tried to nod your head but the motion made your vision flicker & your eyes nearly rolled to the back of your head. A soft grumble emerged from the back of your throat at the sensation. The woman's brows furrowed, and she quickly turned away and began to make something. The clatter and clink of ceramics, even as gentle as they were, made you feel as though your head was splitting in two. A minute later, she returned with a cup of something herbal-smelling and warm. Tea.

"Please, drink this. It will help you," she said, gently lifting your shoulders so you could press your lips to the edge of the cup. Whatever tea it was it tasted like heaven and filled your belly with a warmth that spread across your body, collecting in your fingers. Even though you'd faced the darkest part of your life the night before, it still made you smile, and your vision slowly ebbed back. You could see much clearer now and found yourself examining the multitude of bone chimes, dried herbs & various other decorations in the strange woman's home. She gave a small chuckle upon seeing your smile. "I know you must be afraid, waking in a strange place," she paused, and your brain filled in the blank with 'after what you have been through.'

"But you do not have to be," she said, gently setting the cup down on the bedside table. "My name is Valka. I am the völva of the Raven Clan. Tell me, do you know where you are?" Remembering anything still hurt, but you had an idea of where you were. "England?" 

"Yes, we are in England. A village named Ravensthorpe. Eivor told you, remember?" No, you did not remember. The last 24 hours or so of your life were a blur of sensation, already locked behind something in your mind to protect itself. Who is Eivor?

You had your answer readily enough. Another woman turned the corner, looking worse for wear, blonde hair falling out of a messy-side braid. Something in you stirred, you did recognize her, but… it felt off, in a way, as if you'd known her forever yet forgotten about her still, like some old childhood friend or a distant family member. She stood there awkwardly in the shadows for a moment, the large woman endearingly nervous & fidgeting with her hands while giving Valka a nod. 

"Ah, there you are. Hello Eivor," the seeress said, greeting Eivor in her own way with a small bow and a friendly smile, though you could tell she immediately caught on to Eivor's nervousness. "Are you well?" 

"Yes, Valka, I…" she began, and as you sat up on the bed a little to try and squint to see her better, her ocean blue eyes snapped to your form as if she'd completely forgotten about you, too. She paused for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut and pinching the bridge of her nose. "...I am well." A lie. Valka hummed, then turned back to you. 

"You must rest for now, y/n. I will come back later to change your bandages," she said, feeling your forehead again and swapping the now slightly-warm strip of cloth for another cool one. Then she turned back to Eivor, gesturing towards the door on the far side of the hut, and the two left you to your fevered delirium on the bed. Your head swam with questions as you slowly remembered the ride to Ravensthorpe. Is Eivor okay? Did she find who she was looking for? Are my friends okay? What happened to the arrows in my back? Hmm, what was that tea that Valka made, it tasted good…

The soft embrace of sleep came quickly to you.

  Eivor took too much shit. She was practically a doormat at this point.

Between that snake bitch Fulke turning on her and Basim at the last moment to sell her brother to King Alfred, then Eivor chasing her across what felt like the entire damn continent to try and get Sigurd back even after he'd insulted her and her late family in some sort of manic state rambling about being 'something greater' and only finding dead ends. Mortifyingly, one of those was a literal dead end; Sigurd's amputated arm. And of course there was Dag, who'd begun to refuse to sail with her on account of her 'not looking for their Jarl while she chases glory.' When she came back from Cent and dropped you off at Valka's hut he'd cornered her in the Longhouse, accusing her of 'bringing back the wrong person,' that she'd somehow forgotten about her brother, as if she had not spent the last six months searching. Dag would have to wait a little longer, just as Eivor would have to wait for another letter from Basim.

It was a miracle she had not unravelled, nor burst at the seams from the amount of stress rolling underneath her skin. She grew anxious, reading too far into the looks of Ravensthorpe's denizens, even the slightest downturned glance sending her into a state where she did not know if she wanted to take it out on destroying something, or cry, or both. Despite it all she was still kind. Your rescue had been enough to prove to herself that there was still something human in her. Now she just had to hope you would stay alive, and that the vikingr she gathered to free your kin would not think too lowly of her for even trying while Sigurd was still missing.

To be honest, after a fitful night of barely any sleep, she'd completely forgotten about you. She had gone to Valka for guidance, and for the seeress to give her a chamomile & lavender tincture for restful sleep, and was caught off guard when you roused, already awake and seemingly coherent. You were your own blessing and she'd been grateful to the Gods that you had not passed on overnight. Seeing you suffer at the hands of the Saxons last night had nearly broken something in her mind, especially after Fulke's bloody gift. She had to force herself to stay her hand and not go on a berserked rampage in the middle of the city. She has seen her fair share of blood, war and torture, but for them to take you, something so clearly small and defenseless, and leave you to die an unjust death, alone, left a cold feeling in her bones. 

She took a deep breath of the chilly morning air to clear her mind once she and Valka left her hut, and the two of them walked to the small pond behind. Valka stayed quiet, and sat at the water's edge, motioning for Eivor to join her. The Wolf-Kissed did so, slowly, avoiding the seeress' gaze and stared into the clear waters of the pond, how the morning fog hung over it like a blanket of the fae.

Valka spoke first, looking towards Eivor with a soft expression. She could see the bags under her eyes even in the dim morning light. "Tell me, Eivor. What troubles you? Is it in regards to your brother?" 

Eivor continued to stare at the waters for a moment, contemplating on what to say. Yes, her brother's capture has troubled her greatly. How was she to convince the people of Ravensthorpe that she had not abandoned him, nor her quest of seeing him returned to his people? There was something else. Between her brother's ramblings of being 'something more,' Fulke's notes on him painting a vivid picture of his torture at her hands and that something was awakened within him, even just momentarily, and Basim's cryptic speech towards her for the entirity of it, she felt like she was… left out of something. Out of the loop. There was some connection between all of them that she could not see, nor comprehend. For now, anyway. And between her strange dreams (or maybe memories, she was not sure, they felt so real ) of Asgard and Jötunheimr, and the vision of the wolf-dragon, the blizzard and Sigurd's lost arm (that she now scarcely remembers) when she drank the potion in Rygjafylke, she did not like the inkling of what she thought was the truth. She was not ready to face that part of her. Not yet.

Her speech was quiet, with the hoarse sound of sleep at the back of her throat. "Everything," was all she said. She looked at Valka with an unreadable face, though Valka could see the pain behind her eyes. The Seeress simply nodded in understanding, turning from Eivor to pick at reeds growing along the bank.

"I do not claim to know what is running through your mind, Eivor, but I do feel your pain. The Nornir work in strange ways. Not everything is presented in clear light, as I have told you before," she began, beginning to weave the plants together in a braid. "I understand that your continuous failure to find Sigurd has taken its toll on you. But I do not believe this is the end of your saga , though now it may feel otherwise. What is important is to keep moving forward so that you may find him. Cast away any worry you may have, of what others may think of you. It is your fate to find him. I know so." She finished the braid with a twist, then used another, thinner reed to tie it into a circle; a bracelet. A small, if fleeting, gift. She held it out to Eivor, who gently took it and held it in her palm, running her thumb over the texture of the braid.

"I do not believe the betrayal of your brother lies here, while you strengthen Ravensthorpe and make alliances with the people of England. You are doing what you must for your people. To keep them safe, and fed, though some may not recognize your efforts."

The pair fell silent then, and the sun rose higher into the sky, warming their backs. Eventually, Valka rose. "I should change y/n's dressings." Eivor stayed there for a while longer, still fidgeting with the bracelet in her hand. Mulling over Valka's words, she found it difficult not to ruminate; if this was not her betrayal to Sigurd, what was? Would it be even worse than failing to save him from torture? 

Her thoughts were cut off by a long wailing sound coming from Valka's hut. Immediately, she rushed to the Seeress and you, her body seemingly moving without a mind. The reed-bracelet dangled from her left wrist.

 The sight that greeted her was not pretty. In removing your dressings, the lacerations along your back had become greatly irritated and were oozing fresh blood all over one of poor Valka's cots. You shook from the pain, seizing up as if struck by lightning when Valka removed the last strip of cloth. Eivor must have made a shocked sound, as Valka swung her head around to look at her with a pleading look. 

"Please, Eivor. Her wounds are too dire now that I may see them clearly, they are too large and must be sutured. Help me to restrain her," she pleaded, setting the strips in a pot of water to be boiled later and milling about, searching for her iron sewing needle and the catgut thread given to her by Yanli.

Eivor moved to your side, where you were huffing like an injured animal (you sure felt like one) on your belly, eyes unfocused and unmoving. Gently, she brushed your hair up and out of your face and out of the way of your back, and moved to put a portion of her weight on the cot, her thigh resting against the back of your legs and on a portion of your forearms. Too delirious to react, you could only stare forward.

Valka returned quickly. "The arrow-wounds are older, and have been untreated for some time. I removed the heads last night and have drawn out the infection as best I could but I am afraid that they were too close to her spine and have already caused damage. I do not think she will ever truly recover," she said, grabbing a cloth to gently wipe away the blood that had seeped down the length and sides of your back, setting it down on the bedside table. Eivor felt dazed, seeing so much of your blood soaked up by the cloth, even though she'd seen - and lost - much of it before. Despite Valka's words she hoped that you would recover; despite being a complete stranger, your death would do a number on her mind. 

 When the needle pierced your flesh, you let out another strained wailing noise, and Valka pulled back as if she'd been burned. She grabbed a jar of some cool-smelling salve off of a shelf and quickly rubbed it into the sides of the first laceration. It was completely alien to you, at first burning hot in a way that made you nearly break your teeth clenching them and then tapering off to a much cooler, nicer, numbed feeling. Your mouth hung open as you took rapid breaths, drooling onto the furs and squeezing your eyes shut. 

Valka quickly yet expertly sewed your flesh together, trying to make the experience as painless and as brief as possible for you, though there was only so much she could do. You'd black out at some points, began shaking again at others, and even with the cooling burn of the balm you could still feel the pierce and pull of the needle stitching you together. All the while Eivor kept a firm, grounding presence, the weight of her at your backside preventing you from squirming and injuring yourself further during the process.

After what felt like an eternity, Valka was finished, and she stood back for a moment to wipe at sweat on her brow. The brand new spool of catgut had almost been used up completely. You'd passed out completely by now, your body too fatigued to endure the last five or so minutes. Eivor had checked your wrist for your pulse again, and felt somehow even more relieved than the last time. She and Valka shared a weary look.

"Will she be alright?"

"I will give her new dressings, and change them each hour as needed… but it is now out of my control if she survives this battle. Her life is in the hands of the Nornir." Eivor looked down at your raw sutured flesh with a mixture of pity and frustration. Of course. Stay strong, little one.

 Eivor hummed, and bid Valka farewell with a nod. As soon as she stepped into the cool spring air of Ravensthorpe, she felt something cold against her thighs and forearms. Looking down, she apparently did not realize the volume of your bloodloss, and there were small - yet very noticeable - stains in the cloth of her tunic and pants. There goes brand new tunic number thirty three. Sighing, she rinsed her hands and her fingernails of your blood in the pond, and made to go to her room in the longhouse to change. As she passed the curve of the building, she spotted Dag storming away from the shipyard towards her, a scowl on his face. Not wanting to deal with his disrespect, she speedwalked as inconspicuously as she could into the longhouse and promptly slammed the door to her room just as Dag entered the building. She felt like a teenager, running away from a responsibility and locking herself in her room, but she supposed that was a sacrifice she'd have to make if she wanted to relax.  

She leaned back against the door, listening to the rustle of Dag's armor and footsteps grow closer, then disappear as he decided to leave her alone, and she let out a long, slow exhale, closing her eyes for a moment, just breathing. 

When she opened her eyes she was greeted by a goofy grin from Mouse, the wolf she'd saved from starving in a cellar. As the settlement grew and seasons went by, she noticed she had a tendency to… collect animals. And people. You were an example. She gave Mouse a little smile. 

"How's my boy?" she chuckled, the wolf nosing her palm, smelling your scent. She reached over with her other hand to scritch behind his ear, making the wolf tilt his head in a funny way to lean into it. She looked at the way the sunlight streamed in through the windows high on the wall, and realized she'd forgotten to feed him on time. Reaching into her bag she procured some dried meat, holding it out to the wolf. "Hungry?"

The wolf sniffed the meat, then oh-so-gently took it from Eivor's hand, as if he was afraid he would hurt her, and trotted off to eat it beside her bed. While he ate, Eivor rummaged through the trunk at the foot of her bed for a new, cleaner set of clothing, changing and throwing the bloodied tunic and pants in the designated 'do this later' corner.

Sitting down on the edge of her furs, she rubbed at her eyes and only then did she feel the true effects of last night's broken sleep. Yawning, she reached into her bag for the chamomile tincture, pouring two or three drops of the bitter-tasting liquid underneath her tongue before swallowing, then washed it down with the last bit of mead in her cup from last night. I hope Randvi will not think less of me for taking a day or two to rest.

Laying down and pulling the furs up to her chin with Mouse quickly climbing onto the bed beside her, she quickly fell asleep with the help of the tincture, though she would be plagued with yet another vivid dream.

  She was in a clearing, surrounded by wood and bark and foliage, from what she could see lit by moonlight. The quiet drone of crickets filled the air, and no other sound could be heard. Then Eivor's gentle exhales echoed against the bough of every tree, and she willed herself to stop breathing, if only to stop hearing the quiet sound turn deafening within moments. The crickets quieted as her breathing stopped, and the forest was silent for what felt like an eternity. And then a long, baleful cry split the silence, and the once blue shades of the moonlight boughs took a red, bloody hue. Eivor moved towards the sound against her will and against her fear of the suddenness of it, still unbreathing. 

A second cry rang out against the trees, and as Eivor progressed they began to look less like trees, and more like angular cut stone, and they blurred together in her periphery. The ridges of the bark began to glow and formed strange, unreadable glyphs. She was still not breathing.

A third and final cry was heard closer by, and a distant flock of cawing crows was startled by the sound, and Eivor could hear every single beat of their wings and their hearts. Finally she came upon another clearing, and found a fox ensnared by a trap, whimpering, red vibrant blood running down the creature's leg to form rivers in the soil. It looked to her with wild, slitted, pleading eyes. As Eivor reached into the jaws of the trap to disarm it, the fox cried out again and again and struggled until Eivor had finally broken the trap in half. Instead of being grateful like she expected, the fox clamped its jaws around her hand and pulled with a force that should not have belonged to such a small creature. Crying out in pain, Eivor cradled the hand to her chest, watching the blood curl around her fingers and drip onto the forest floor, and wherever it dripped bright patches of red moss grew. When she looked up again, she did not see a fox, but saw you, dressed in a sheer white gown with the same slitted, now guilty, eyes and a bloodied mouth. You opened your mouth to say something, but the only sound that came out was a pleased moan.

 She awoke with a gasp.

  The next morning came, and when you stirred you were greeted by the savory smell of stew. There was a constant dull, radiating pain coming from your back, and though you could not remember what happened clearly, you knew that your split skin had been stitched together. Blinking rapidly you tried to raise a hand to wipe at the sleep in your eyes and the simple motion caused a new wave of pain as the muscles in your shoulder screamed and you hissed, forcing your body to relax and rest your arm again. This would not be an easy thing to recover from, but you knew that you would adapt.

Valka took notice of your sound, and moved to stand by the bedside. "Good morning, y/n. How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," you said with a hoarse voice, gently pushing yourself to lean more of your weight on your side than your stomach. The seeress pressed her palm to your forehead, and hummed, pleased. "Your fever has gone down a bit."

 She then grabbed the bowl of stew on the side table and held it towards you. "Are you hungry?"

Your body answered the question, your stomach growling and mouth watering at the smell of the hearty stew. You'd forgotten that the last time you ate was four nights ago, and it'd been only stale bread and water. Maybe eating a savory, hot meal was not the best decision but right now you'd kill for it. You eagerly accepted the bowl and spoon held out for you using your slightly less painful arm. It was amazing , melting over your tongue and perfectly spiced, and as you expected far too much for your belly after being empty for four days. You took three spoonfuls before a wave of nausea hit you, and you had to set it back on the table.

Valka had turned away to make another numbing salve and let you eat in peace, then heard you set the bowl down. She did not look up from the mortar and pestle for a moment, but still acknowledged you. "Are you well?" 

To be honest, no. "I will have to eat slowly," you said, sitting up slightly in the cot and fidgeting with your hands.

Valka, kind soul, was all-accommodating. "Would you like something simpler? Bread perhaps? Tarben bakes the best loaves, and I am sure he would enjoy a new patron," she said, sending you a gentle smile. Bread would be gentler on your stomach… you nodded, and settled back down in the cot for now. 

 Valka shrugged on an overcoat made of raven's feathers and thick bear fur, and bid you farewell with "I will return within a half hour," leaving you to blissful solitude in her hut.

With your fever quelled, you could think more clearly than before and remembered much more. The raid, Franklin's cowardice, being captured, being tortured… all in a few days, the life as you'd known it had been turned on its head, and here you were, half-dead in a town you didn't even know existed. All thanks to the mysterious woman that had saved you from a worse fate. And then your mind turned to Frederik, and despite being injured, your blood boiled with a new fury as you thought of all the ways you would confront and kill him for what he'd done not only to you but your clan as well. You could only hope that Gunnar, Vilmar and the rest of your friends were still alive.

Your furious thoughts were cut short when you heard footsteps from the entrance of the home, though they were not Valka's. Curious, you peeked around the corner to your ability, and were greeted by the figure of the giant Norse again. Eivor. She appeared rested, though worrisome, playing with the sleeves of her tunic. "Valka, are you here? I had another vision," she said, keeping her gaze to the floor… troubled by something.

You chose to speak up. "No, she left to get bread from Tarben." This startled the mighty drengr, and she almost comically jumped from the sound of your voice with wide eyes before forcing a much more stoic front, furrowing her brows. It almost made you giggle. Trying to spare herself from more embarrassment, she turned to leave. "Thank you."

"Wait!" you yelled out, a bit too loud and a bit too harsh, making you cough from your throat's sudden use after days of scarcely speaking above a whisper, and the action filled your ribs with fresh pain, making you wheeze. Eivor had stopped in the doorway, looking back at you with a puzzled and concerned expression. "Wait, I…" you began, clearing your throat and taking a deep breath.

"I wanted to thank you," you said, feeling suddenly small and anxious. "For saving me." The floor did indeed look very interesting.

Eivor blinked. "Of course," she started, facing you fully now. "It was the least I could do,  after what the Saxons did." You slowly sat up in the cot again, oh how the floor was so interesting, and there was a long pause between the both of you, as if you'd wanted to say more yet could not find the backbone to do so.

You spoke again first. "I remember why I was there," you said, running your fingers over and through the fur blanket. "What happened before I was captured." Eivor walked a little closer, leaning back on a table with her arms crossed. "Why?"

You met her strikingly blue eyes. "My Jarl betrayed me. My clan. Left us to die," you explained, voice laced with bitterness and remorse. Eivor stayed silent but held your gaze.

"He had a choice, of doing the best for his people, or for himself. He broke the only oath he promised to us. Left us to die at the hands of the Saxons after we'd raided Raculf monastery. Things went smoothly at first, then reinforcements came… there was no way we would have fought our way out. And instead of negotiating, even attempting something, he ran."

Eivor hummed. "...what is his name?"

"Frederik Mikkelsen."

She took note of this, filing it away into her memory. Another long pause. "Why did you raid Raculf?"

You sighed. "For supplies. Frederik made it out to be some sort of conquest. We'd been sailing to Normandy to establish a new settlement for his father but were thrown off course by a storm, landed here in England. We were still fucking drying our clothes when he sent us off to raid. Couldn't wait a damn week for assistance from another Dane camp. I swear something snapped in his head as soon as he saw that storm," you said, reaching over for another spoonful of the stew, though your stomach still complained.

At some point Eivor had looked down at the floor again, mulling over your words. She'd send out a rescue party tomorrow. "I will see to it that your kinsmen are rescued as soon as possible," she said somberly. She knew the pain you felt, having the direction of your life turned completely around. Of having to leave it behind to wither in the past, to let your rage fester and seek revenge for wrongdoings. "And if I hear word of Frederik, I will let you know."

Eivor's kindness was blinding. You could only muster a small "thank you," and Eivor took this as the time to leave. She went to duck under the door frame, then promptly bumped right into Valka.

Valka nearly dropped the basket of bread but caught it at the last second. "Oof! Oh, my apologies, Eivor. I did not know you would be here. Is something the matter?" Eivor only shot Valka a small apologetic smile and shook her head, and bid the two of you farewell. She would discuss her dream with the seeress some other time.

You ate a bit of the bread, your stomach still not properly enjoying the sensation of being filled after days of not eating but the loaves were soft and warm and far easier on you. Valka then made you more of the sweet-smelling tea, and suggested that you rest. Whatever was in that tea blissfully knocked you out cold. You can't be in pain if you're unconscious.

[chocolate-parfait]

Oooh i love the halloween prompts! May i request 43 and 48 for Dazai? Thank you so much :)

The Devil's temptation - Ikemen Vampire (Dazai)

Pureblood!Dazai AU :)

I didn't exactly insist on it as it's not what I wanted to focus on, it's pretty subtle actually, but if we want to make more sense of his request then we'd have to consider him as a being able to turn his love interest into a vampire

43. “Do you know what I am?”

48. “Would you like to join me?”

How scandalous for a lady to wander the streets at such a late hour. It certainly wasn't the most recommended pastime, and definitely not one suitable for one of the worst neighborhoods in the city, where neither the electrical halo from the richer districts nor the sun rays could reach past the dark, thick clouds of pollution. Not that it was her personal choice to do such a thing, the fast paced rhythm of her heels against the cold and wet stone pavement spoke loud enough for anyone to hear.

Her labored, loud breaths were muffled by the sound of the heavy rain, and despite the fact that running in such conditions was a ridiculously risky thing to do, she was grateful for the thick curtain the sky had sent down on her as she hoped it served as some kind of protection from her pursuers. She felt eyes on her with each step she took, and she was pretty sure she saw a pair of glowing eyes blinking at her from the end of the road. Despite the fear she couldn't turn back on her steps now, they were following her. They were stronger and faster, and they fed on terror and human lives, sometimes even turning you in one of their own kind, at least that's what she had heard from the gossips in the city market. She had dismissed those ridiculous voices as fruits of the irrational human mind, a childish trick by the horror-loving subconcious of humans.

But oh, did she take it all back now. Now that her heart was so close to popping out of her heaving chest, she didn't have the arrogance to refuse the reality behind what the newspapers and rumors had tried to warn her about.

She realized that tears were freely flowing down her rain-stained face the moment something tepid caressed her cheek following repetitive, vertical paths, but there was no use in trying to dry them, she was already drenched to her very core anyways.

In spite of the fatigue creeping up her numb limbs, she shivered in her damp, frigid clothes. She was definitely going to catch one of the worst colds ever, if she made it out alive, that is, but the thought, for some unkown reason to her, brought her back to the warm memories of her days at her father's shop. The remembrance of the addicting smell of books, the refreshing one of newly imported exotic teas, her father's deep voice coming from behind the counter and the chime of clients happily chatting about the newest entries in the catalogue. These were all faimiliar images she was extremely fond of, but the dissonance between the past and the present plunged her mind into an seemingly endless maze of chaos and near delirium.

As her lucidity slipped away further away from her grasp, a face came to her mind, casting light on her heart like a beacon and chasing the darkness away, slowly melting the paralysis that had freezed her brain in a state of utter fright. It was the visage of a man that had recently become part of her everyday life, a necessary ingredient for the formula of her happiness. With his amber orbs and calm smile, he had charmed his way deep into her heart in a matter of just a couple days and regular visits. He'd come to the shop almost every day, leisurely walk between the shelves in search of a new book and then take a look at the imported goods. It was a pretty small business but they had signed deals that let them have first quality products from the far oriental continent. That's probably the reason why he became one of their best buyers. He came from a land far, far away, and his facial features made that much clear to anyone who looked at him, but what she cared about the most wasn't his face nor the thickness of his wallet, she cherished his voice, his laugh, the way he moved and the way he looked at her; deep in her heart she hoped to be able to voice her feelings sooner or later, yet she feared the traces of affections in his golden orbs would transform into disgust and hatred.

Oh, the way the poor thing's core fluttered with anticipation whenever she thought of him! So immersed in her own fantasies that she didn't realize the grave mistake she had made... To fall in love with a monster, that was a sin the Heavens weren't too keen on forgiving.

A loud thud coming from the end of the path teared her from the rose gardens of her mind. She had been running for who knows how long, but now her escape had brought her to a dead-end. She felt a piercing shiver run down her spine, making her hair stand up like a scared animal's, and then again, once again she felt that pair of eyes on her back. She turned on her heels but was met with the dark void of an empty, unfamiliar street. She had thrown herself into an even bigger mess, for thus she knew that no scream, no matter how loud or pleading, would get someone to bother coming to rescue her, not in that part of the city. An imposing sense of dread filled her whole being to the brim, preceding that fake ray of salvation that was coming her way.

A hand suddenly grasped her wrist, pulling her back against something akin to a wall, yet warm and breathing, even in that glacial rain. Something soft tickled her neck from behind, and a voice spoke into her ear.

"What are you doing here, Kazuko-san?" It was his voice, she would recognize it everywhere. That subtle accent, the smooth and pleasant tone, it was the voice she had so longed to hear in those moments of deep despair that chased her the whole escape. She turned her body to face him, and threw her arms around the man's neck.

"I'm so glad you're here! I-...I was so scared-" she whined, feeling her voice finally crack, letting the adrenaline dissipate through her strangled sobs. In the midst of her delight she didn't even question where he came from nor what he was doing there, and he knew that.

Dazai smiled a wicked grin, one too twisted to be recognized as his. His pupils flew to her trembling form and narrowed like that of a cat's, though almost glowing with a supernatural light. "My dear, don't you know that all men are wolves?" He chuckled and pulled slightly away. By closing once more the gap between their faces, he could now get an even better view of the confusion and fear forming in the clear jewels that were her eyes.

"Do you know what I am?" At the sound of those words he felt her shiver against him. How addicting of a feeling that was, he could never seem to get enough of her. Those pearly eyes full of innocence that gleamed with joy and delight whenever they met his, that warm voice that shyly singed his name at the sight of him, those small, delicate hands that fidgeted with a rebel strand of hair when he knew all they wanted was lose themselves in his violet locks. She smelled amazingly appetizing, and her pure, chaste feelings only made him want to gobble her up right then and there, but something was telling him that just once wouldn't have been enough. Whether that something was his own vampiric instincts or his inner demons, he didn't know, nor did he have the time to care.

"Don't tell me you still haven't realized?" He teased her, grazing her smooth skin with his fangs. She wasn't dumb, and he was sure the answer to that question was already swirling around her pretty little head.

Another shiver. Was it from the insistent rain or the influence those canines had on their victim? She was scared, throughoutly frightened, and the way her insides twisted with pleasure at the closure between their bodies made her want to beat herself up. A monster was about to turn her into its next meal, and even if it was the man she loved she should have been running away, she should have been kicking and screaming her lungs out, but precisely because it was Dazai she couldn't bring herself to move. A small moan left her lips, a product of the interior conflict that was taking place in her core, and when she felt him tighten his hold because of it, she felt the Devil tempt her harder and harder, until she couldn't stand it no more.

"Oh, I have an idea!"

"Would you like to join me? ” he whispered loud enough for her to hear despite the rain and, perhaps, joking. If she refused he would've gladly let her go with no problem, playing off the whole incident as a mere joke, but the sarcasm flew right over her head, and appealing to her determination, she made a decision.

If making this sacrifice meant becoming his for eternity, if it meant having her feelings corresponded, if it meant feeling those lips touch her body and sweet words grace her ears, then she was ready to sign the contract to reserve her own personal seat in Hell, right next to his'.

"P-please-" she breathed in his ear. "Please, make me yours..."

All his life, he couldn't be satisfied unless he tainted whatever he touched with his own dirty colors, and although he was aware of how much he tried to resist his overwhelming thirst - a clear sign of his attraction and true feelings - for her these past few weeks, his patience had run thin. If before he was on the verge of snapping, after hearing that desperate plea he felt all his self control suddenly slip away from his grasp.

He bit down on her neck, teeth piercing its soft flesh, and a wave of euphoric pleasure came crashing down on both of them. The more he feasted on her red essence, the more she tightened her frantic hands around the drenched fabric of his clothes in search of support as her knees grew weaker by the second.

There was no going back now, and in the last moments of conciousness, the warmth of a soft kiss and words of appreciation made their way through her hazy mind. This was something she wasn't going to regret, and no angel nor devil could change her mind.

[autolovecraft]

I'll never get the picture out of my head as long as I live.

At last the spring thaw came, and graves were laboriously prepared for the nine silent harvests of the grim reaper which waited in the tomb, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. He worked largely by feeling now, since newly gathered clouds hid the moon; and though progress was still slow, he felt heartened at the extent of his encroachments on the top and bottom of the aperture. He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste.

In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had grown so suddenly recalcitrant. The pile of tools soon reached, and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible than a cry. Whether he had imagination enough to wish they were empty, is strongly to be doubted. Great heavens, Birch, and I don't blame you for giving him a cast-aside coffin, but you always did go too damned far!

He was curiously unelated over his impending escape, and almost dreaded the exertion, for his form had the indolent stoutness of early middle age. His frightened horse had gone home, but his frightened wits never quite did that. An eye for an eye! Then he fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of his calling by rousing and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a year ago last August … He was the devil incarnate, Birch, but you always did go too damned far! For the long-neglected latch was obviously broken, leaving the careless undertaker trapped in the vault, a victim of his own oversight. It was generally stated that the affliction and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch had locked himself for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley Cemetery, escaping only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but while this much was undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker things which the man used to whisper to me in his drunken delirium toward the last.

He would not, he found, have to pile another on his platform to make the proper height; for the hole was on exactly the right level to use as soon as its size might permit.

It was Asaph's coffin, Birch, just as I thought!

Birch, being by temperament phlegmatic and practical, did not shout long; but proceeded to grope about for some tools which he recalled seeing in a corner of the tomb. The air had begun to be exceedingly unwholesome; but to this detail he paid no attention as he toiled, half by feeling, at the heavy and corroded metal of the latch. At any rate he kicked and squirmed frantically and automatically whilst his consciousness was almost eclipsed in a half-swoon. Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no practiced teller of tales. He could not walk, it appeared, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. Why did you do it, Birch? The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon. As he planned, he could not but wish that the units of his contemplated staircase had been more securely made.

Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no practiced teller of tales.

Birch cautiously ascended with his tools and stood abreast of the narrow transom.

The narrow transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. Then he fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of his calling by rousing and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a succession of shuddering whispers that seared into the bewildered ears like the hissing of vitriol.

Birch decided he could get through the transom. Great heavens, Birch, but you got what you deserved. He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste. In either case it would have been appropriate; for the unexpected tenacity of the easy-looking brickwork was surely a sardonic commentary on the vanity of mortal hopes, and the overhead ventilation funnel virtually none at all; though ever afterward he refused to do anything of importance on that fateful sixth day of the week.

I've seen sights before, but there was one thing too much here. He had, indeed, made that coffin for Matthew Fenner; but had cast it aside at last as too awkward and flimsy, in a fit of curious sentimentality aroused by recalling how kindly and generous the little old man had been to him during his bankruptcy five years before.

Fortunately the village was small and the death rate low, so that it was possible to give all of Birch's inanimate charges a temporary haven in the single antiquated receiving tomb. As his hammer blows began to fall, the horse outside whinnied in a tone which may have been mocking. He cried aloud once, and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible than a cry.

Undisturbed by oppressive reflections on the time, the place, and the source of a task whose performance deserved every possible stimulus. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. He gave old Matt the very best his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible. You know what a fiend he was for revenge—how he ruined old Raymond thirty years after their boundary suit, and how he stepped on the puppy that snapped at him a year ago last August … He was the devil incarnate, Birch, but you knew what a little man old Fenner was. The narrow transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the coffin niches on the sides and rear—which Birch seldom took the trouble to use—afforded no ascent to the space above the door. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. The narrow transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the coffin niches on the sides and rear—which Birch seldom took the trouble to use—afforded no ascent to the space above the door. His head was broken in, and everything was tumbled about. The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon. Several of the coffins began to split under the stress of handling, and he planned to save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible.

Most distinctly Birch was lax, insensitive, and professionally undesirable; yet I still think he was not perfectly sober, he subsequently admitted; though he had not then taken to the wholesale drinking by which he later tried to forget certain things. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed it. This arrangement could be ascended with a minimum of awkwardness, and would furnish the desired height. The skull turned my stomach, but the bald fact of imprisonment so far from the tomb. The body was pretty badly gone, but if ever I saw vindictiveness on any face—or former face.

Finally he decided to lay a base of three parallel with the wall, to place upon this two layers of two each, and upon these a single box to serve as the platform. As his hammer blows began to fall, the horse outside whinnied in a tone which may have been just fear, and it may have been fear mixed with a queer belated sort of remorse for bygone crudities. Why did you do it, Birch? He worked largely by feeling now, since newly gathered clouds hid the moon; and though progress was still slow, he felt heartened at the extent of his encroachments on the top and bottom of the aperture. His head was broken in, and everything was tumbled about.

[perkwunos]

In those days I had not so much as set eyes on an Englishman. A lonely, ever-hungry teenager, I had been thrown out of school and kept body and soul together by doing odd jobs such as sticking up theatre bills, working on the Odessa docks, and reading psalms at funerals. All my free time was devoted to memorizing the self-tutor [English textbook] as if this were my sole salvation.

I was then almost seventeen. Passers-by must have been startled by the sight of me: long, lanky, pale-faced, uncommunicative, with the clothes fairly falling off my back.

I read voraciously and without system. A conglomeration of Darwin, Schopenhauer, Dostoievsky and Pisarev left my mind in utter confusion. Out of this confusion I constructed a fantastic philosophy which was to defy all the Kants in the world and bring about the regeneration of mankind. Like most seventeen-year-old Russian youths, my nights were made sleepless by ruminations upon the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and the hereafter.

In the winter, when work on the docks was slack, I spent whole days in the snug and comfortable municipal library. It was there I discovered Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship, a book I revere to this day.

Another year went by like this. I had broken completely with my family.

One day when I was working on the docks a foreign sailor beckoned to me and thrust a thick book into my hands, demanding 25 kopeks for it. He glanced furtively about as he did so, as if the book were a banned one. Sailors on foreign ships often brought forbidden literature into Tsarist Russia.

That evening after work I took my book to the lighthouse at the end of the jetty. It was a book of poetry written by a certain Walt Whitman, whose name I had never heard before.

I opened at random and read:

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, I am afoot with my vision . . . Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance . . . Walking the old hills of Judea with the beautiful gentle God by my side, Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars . . . I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green . . .

Never before had I read anything like this. Clearly it had been written by an inspired madman who, in a state of trance of delirium, fancied himself absolutely free of the illusions of time and space. The distant past was to him identical with the present moment and his native Niagara Falls was neighbor to the millions of suns whirling in the void of the universe.

I was shaken by these poems as much as by some epoch-making event. The chaos of my emotions at that time was in perfect harmony with the chaotic composition of the poetry. I seemed to have climbed to dizzying heights from which I looked down upon the ant-hill of human life and activities.

But other poems followed, poems written from within the very heart of this human ant-hill and dealing with the commonplaces of ant-hill life. The poet appeared to have forgotten his cosmic ecstasy in the midst of the poor realities of every day. People and things falling haphazardly within his range of vision passed in endless procession...

Kornei Chukovsky, Many Thanks, Walt Whitman!

[avelera]

Procopius on the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD)

(Bolded for commentary by me.)

During these times there was a pestilence by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated. Now in the case of all other scourges sent from heaven some explanation of a cause might be given by daring men, such as the many theories propounded by those who are clever in these matters; for they love to conjure up causes which are absolutely incomprehensible to man, and to fabricate outlandish theories of natural philosophy knowing well that they are saying nothing sound but considering it sufficient for them, if they completely deceive by their argument some of those whom they meet and persuade them to their view. But for this calamity it is quite impossible either to express in words or to conceive in thought any explanation, except indeed to refer it to God. For it did not come in a part of the world nor upon certain men, nor did it confine itself to any season of the year, so that from such circumstances it might be possible to find subtle explanations of a cause, but it embraced the entire world, and blighted the lives of all men, though differing from one another in the most marked degree, respecting neither sex nor age.

For much as men differ with regard to places in which they live, or in the law of their daily life, or in natural bent, or in active pursuits, or in whatever else man differs from man, in the case of this disease alone the difference availed naught. And it attacked some in the summer season, others in the winter, and still others at the other times of the year. Now let each one express his own judgment concerning the matter, both sophist and astrologer, but as for me, I shall proceed to tell where this disease originated and the manner in which it destroyed men.

It started from the Egyptians who dwell in Pelusium. Then it divided and moved in one direction towards Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, and in the other direction it came to Palestine on the borders of Egypt; and from there it spread over the whole world, always moving forward and travelling at times favorable to it. For it seemed to move by fixed arrangement, and to tarry for a specified time in each country, casting its blight slightingly upon none, but spreading in either direction right out to the ends of the world, as if fearing lest some corner of the earth might escape it. For it left neither island nor cave nor mountain ridge which had human inhabitants; and if it had passed by any land, either not affecting the men there or touching them in indifferent fashion, still at a later time it came back; then those who dwelt round about this land, whom formerly it had afflicted most sorely, it did not touch at all, but it did not remove from the place in question until it had given up its just and proper tale of dead, so as to correspond exactly to the number destroyed at the earlier time among those who dwelt round about. And this disease always took its start from the coast, and from there went up to the interior.

And in the second year it reached Byzantium in the middle of spring, where it happened that I was staying at that time. And it came as follows. Apparitions of supernatural beings in human guise of every description were seen by many persons, and those who encountered them thought that they were struck by the man they had met in this or that part of the body, as it havened, and immediately upon seeing this apparition they were seized also by the disease. Now at first those who met these creatures tried to turn them aside by uttering the holiest of names and exorcising them in other ways as well as each one could, but they accomplished absolutely nothing, for even in the sanctuaries where the most of them fled for refuge they were dying constantly. But later on they were unwilling even to give heed to their friends when they called to them and they shut themselves up in their rooms and pretended that they did not hear, although their doors were being beaten down, fearing, obviously, that he who was calling was one of those demons. But in the case of some the pestilence did not come on in this way, but they saw a vision in a dream and seemed to suffer the very same thing at the hands of the creature who stood over them, or else to hear a voice foretelling to them that they were written down in the number of those who were to die. But with the majority it came about that they were seized by the disease without becoming aware of what was coming either through a waking vision or a dream.

And they were taken in the following manner. They had a sudden fever, some when just roused from sleep, others while walking about, and others while otherwise engaged, without any regard to what they were doing. And the body showed no change from its previous color, nor was it hot as might be expected when attacked by a fever, nor indeed did any inflammation set in, but the fever was of such a languid sort from its commencement and up till evening that neither to the sick themselves nor to a physician who touched them would it afford any suspicion of danger. It was natural, therefore, that not one of those who had contracted the disease expected to die from it. But on the same day in some cases, in others on the following day, and in the rest not many days later, a bubonic swelling developed; and this took place not only in the particular part of the body which is called boubon, that is, "below the abdomen," but also inside the armpit, and in some cases also beside the ears, and at different points on the thighs.

Up to this point, then, everything went in about the same way with all who had taken the disease. But from then on very marked differences developed; and I am unable to say whether the cause of this diversity of symptoms was to be found in the difference in bodies, or in the fact that it followed the wish of Him who brought the disease into the world. For there ensued with some a deep coma, with others a violent delirium, and in either case they suffered the characteristic symptoms of the disease. For those who were under the spell of the coma forgot all those who were familiar to them and seemed to lie sleeping constantly. And if anyone cared for them, they would eat without waking, but some also were neglected, and these would die directly through lack of sustenance. But those who were seized with delirium suffered from insomnia and were victims of a distorted imagination; for they suspected that men were coming upon them to destroy them, and they would become excited and rush off in flight, crying out at the top of their voices. And those who were attending them were in a state of constant exhaustion and had a most difficult time of it throughout. For this reason, everybody pitied them no less than the sufferers…because of the great hardships which they were undergoing. For when the patients fell from their beds and lay rolling upon the floor, they kept putting them back in place, and when they were struggling to rush headlong out of their houses, they would force them back by shoving and pulling against them…

Death came in some cases immediately, in others after many days; and with some the body broke out with black pustules about as large as a lentil and these did not survive even one day, but all succumbed immediately. With many also a vomiting of blood ensued without visible cause and straightway brought death. Moreover, I am able to declare this, that the most illustrious physicians predicted that many would die, who unexpectedly escaped entirely from suffering shortly afterwards, and that they declared that many would be saved, who were destined to be carried off almost immediately. So it was that in this disease there was no cause which came within the province of human reasoning; for in all cases the issue tended to be something unaccountable. For example, while some were helped by bathing, others were harmed in no less degree. And of those who received no care many died, but others, contrary to reason, were saved. And again, methods of treatment showed different results with different patients. Indeed the whole matter may be stated thus, that no device was discovered by man to save himself, so that either by taking precautions he should not suffer, or that when the malady had assailed him he should get the better of it; but suffering came without warning and recovery was due to no external cause. And in the case of women who were pregnant death could be certainly foreseen if they were taken with the disease. For some died through miscarriage, but others perished immediately at the time of birth with the infants they bore. However, they say that three women in confinement survived though their children perished, and that one woman died at the very time of childbirth but that the child was born and survived…

Now the disease in Byzantium ran a course of four months, and its greatest virulence lasted about three. And at first the deaths were a little more than the normal, then the mortality rose still higher, and afterwards the tale of dead reached five thousand each day, and again it even came to ten thousand and still more than that. Now in the beginning each man attended to the burial of the dead of his own house, and these they threw even into the tombs of others, either escaping detection or using violence; but afterwards confusion and disorder everywhere became complete. For slaves remained destitute of masters, and men who in former times were very prosperous were deprived of the service of their domestics who were either sick or dead, and many houses became completely destitute of human inhabitants. For this reason, it came about that some of the notable men of the city because of the universal destitution remained unburied for many days…

And when it came about that all the tombs which had existed previously were filled with the dead, then they dug up all the places about the city one after the other, laid the dead there, each one as he could, and departed; but later on those who were making these trenches, no longer able to keep up with the number of the dying, mounted the towers of the fortifications in Sycae, and tearing off the roofs threw the bodies there in complete disorder; and they piled them up just as each one happened to fall, and filled practically all the towers with corpses, and then covered them again with their roofs. As a result of this an evil stench pervaded the city and distressed the inhabitants still more, and especially whenever the wind blew fresh from that quarter.

At that time all the customary rites of burial were overlooked. For the dead were not carried out escorted by a procession in the customary manner, nor were the usual chants sung over them, but it was sufficient if one carried on his shoulders the body of one of the dead to the parts of the city which bordered on the sea and flung him down; and there the corpses would be thrown upon skiffs in a heap, to be conveyed wherever it might chance. At that time, too, those of the population who had formerly been members of the factions laid aside their mutual enmity and in common they attended to the burial rites of the dead, and they carried with their own hands the bodies of those who were no connections of theirs and buried them. Nay, more, those who in times past used to take delight in devoting themselves to pursuits both shameful and base, shook off the unrighteousness of their daily lives and practiced the duties of religion with diligence, not so much because they had learned wisdom at last nor because they had become all of a sudden lovers of virtue, as it were---for when qualities have become fixed in men by nature or by the training of a long period of time, it is impossible for them to lay them aside thus lightly, except, indeed, some divine influence for good has breathed upon them---but then all, so to speak, being thoroughly terrified by the things which were happening, and supposing that they would die immediately, did, as was natural, learn respectability for a season by sheer necessity. Therefore, as soon as they were rid of the disease and were saved, and already supposed that they were in security, since the curse had moved on to other peoples, then they turned sharply about and reverted once more to their baseness of hearts…  

And work of every description ceased, and all the trades were abandoned by the artisans, and all other work as well, such as each had in hand. Indeed, in a city which was simply abounding in all good things, starvation almost absolute was running riot. Certainly, it seemed a difficult and very notable thing to have a sufficiency of bread or of anything else; so that with some of the sick it appeared that the end of life came about sooner than it should have come by reason of the lack of the necessities of life…

Such was the course of the pestilence in the Roman empire at large as well as in Byzantium. And it fell also upon the land of the Persians and visited all the other barbarians besides.