I am half tickled – pat me on the back a tittle,

Joy makes raids on me, waits, bids me happy office

Ruffs my feathers,

Half puffed-out self-importance, a conceited clever me

 

These roisterers do square and temper here my fool’s abundance

Neat feisty blithesome rhymers of the clachan

Know how they rob this puppy self, cock sure of adulation;

Bright and insightful

Show how so sweet entreated am I by their graceful flowers

Let them come in and share their yesteryear and musty dowers,

Fair resurrections, common cups of cordial, bringing bearing

Full stock of rough affection

 

Howso, so many adepts of the pen lived long ago,

And joyed in verse made mixed with pith and marrow

Love-gifted of themselves, as such, so worthy to be sung

Commanding all of mense in ancient chance inamoratas

Offering me cheer here might appear implicit slender hope

Remembrance waits the gate for maybe vain and sluggard me

In aftertimes, in futures postulated, yet to be

Since here restored so many battling rhymers way-to-go

Strow freely busking lithe and racy talent

Set off of modest impress in here’s slender pocket-book

Looked on by chance: a catch

 

That luck had landed; purchase doubtful, hand-me-down besides

On loan it forward goes, will go, abroad on viral wing

Long running down the ages, yellowed pages feathering

Productive of pleasures, true carouse of lissom charmed delight:

And next, shall next hand in its life come in, pick vaguely out

And turn its leaves through winning things parfitly made to please;

Broad stories, stocked of searchings, hand-pared fashioned instances

Of lowly toils and thick embroils by which adventures stroll

Turning round here, switching back there; perching on vertigo

Of turmoils in extremis as we fear that hanging woe

Hovering precipitant

 

How could the future, present, never hear nor ever know

These lingering lines have power, to evict our sometime shadow foe

Dolour, and raise extraordinary ado

Convict and conjure, depict, enlist, imaginary picture show

Against the torpid human mind bring zests to overthrow,

In narrative by argument impatience moody plumed,

So raising rooms for valours, as it were, invention’s ghosts

Fold phantom loves past plaintiff, edifying to engross

We ostlers half installed, at staging posts who call

For entertaining

Rest to our ptarmigan soul failings, adolescent epic railings

By lyric salve makeovers

 

Discovery thus restores; our sullen plights their doubts belayed,

These luckless ghosts dispel and comes in passion faking real -

The lass who never lived, whose suitor playful powers invested

Decanted through a pondering arm one day some worlds ago

Herein revives a mine, a gold dust lately thought exhausted,

Sunk, travelled, and anatomised, absolutely wrest of spoils,

Up hauls this day overlong forsaken ore, its radiance

Haply revealed, a modest boast, handsome, past disregarding

Most heedlessly