Forever and a Day

F
No more than that
Dead cat shall I
Escape the corpse
I kept in shape
For the day off
Immortals take
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Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,
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Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended
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This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
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from A Ballad Upon A Wedding by Sir John Suckling
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From “Five Poems” by Edward Dahlberg
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I
He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah.

I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise.

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We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth.

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V
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