Motto

There are places for chaos on the page,
meaningful, apparent
confusion — temps en temps on the continent
does not mean “time to time” in Kent,
or Greenwich. From stone through weeds and parchment,
through bad times, words made their way to the printed page.
Bibles now not just for those who go to worship by carriage,
but for those who pray with bare feet,

O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

To a Venetian coin, the first Gazetta
For its generic title became debtor.

Whither excursive Fancy tends thy Flight?
Like Eastern Caliph masking thee at night,
By Vezier memory attended still,
Thou pertly pryest in each domicil.

THEL'S MOTTO
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl? I
The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks.
All but the youngest; she in paleness sought the secret air.
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day:

Long neglect has worn away
Half the sweet enchanting smile;
Time has turned the bloom to gray;
Mold and damp the face defile.

But that lock of silky hair,
Still beneath the picture twined,
Tells what once those features were,

Because of the unaccountable spirit of the troops
oh we were marched as we were never marched before
and flanked them off from home. Stupid Meade
was after them, head on to tail, but we convinced
him, finally, to flank, flank, cut off their head.
He finally understood, the idiot, and got a fort
named after him, for wisdom. He probably thought
Lee would conquer Washington from Appomattox

Take a statement, the same as yesterday’s dictation:
Lately pain has been there waiting when I awake.
Creative despair and failure have made their patient.
Anyway, I’m afraid I have nothing to say.
Those crazy phrases I desecrated the paper
With against the grain ... Taste has turned away her face
Temporarily, like a hasty, ill-paid waitress
At table, barely capable but very vague.