(apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Half a page, half a page,
Half a page onward,
All in the town of Roseneath,
Wrote the four, humbled.
"Forward, the Write Brigade!
Charge for your pens!" he said:
Into the town of Roseneath
Wrote the four, humbled.
"Forward, the Write Brigade!"
Was a person there dismay’d?
Not tho’ the writers even knew
If and when they’d finish:
Theirs not to make and edit,
Theirs not to once regret it,
Theirs but to later vet it:
Into the town of Roseneath
Wrote the four, humbled.
Canon to the right of them,
Epson to the left of them,
HP in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Stopped only by the dinner bell,
Boldly they wrote and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Wrote the four, humbled.
Flash’d all their pencils bare,
Flash’d as they wrote in air
Skewering the grammar there,
Challenged to 15,000, while
All wives and husbands’ wonder’d:
Plunged in the writer’s smoke
Line by solid line they wrote.
Poetry and also prose
Reel’d from the pencil-stroke
Their dictionaries plundered
But O the words in a day they wrote,
(At least about a basic five hundred.)
Canon to the right of them,
Epson to the left of them,
HP in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Stopped only by the dinner bell,
Page by page the numbers fell,
They that had written well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of four, humbled.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild verse they made!
All the world wonder’d.
And honored the challenge made!
Honor the Write Brigade,
Noble four, Finished!
I envy your imagination!
ReplyDeleteInspired to give it a go
ReplyDeleteTHE SCRIBES AT MIDNIGHT (ala The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes)
The moon was high in the star-lit sky
Its yellow light agleam
Four scribes hunched low, where keyboards fly
Lost deep in a writer’s dream
By the candle’s glow, their words did flow,
The deadline drawing near
Each tale they spun, ’til the month was done,
Their passion was sincere.