Be proud, as Spaniards! and Leap for Pride, ye Fleas Henceforth in Nature's @3Minim@1 World Grandees, In Phoebus' Archives registered are ye -- And this your Patent of Nobility. No Skip-Jacks now, nor civiller Skip-Johns, Dread Anthropophagi! Specks of living Bronze, I hail you one & all, sans Pros or Cons, Descendants from a noble Race of @3Dons@1. What tho' that great ancestral Flea be gone Immortal with immortalizing Donne -- His earthly Spots bleach'd off as Papists gloze, In purgatory fire on Bardolph's Nose, Or else starved out, his aery tread defied By the dry Potticary's bladdery Hide, Which cross'd unchang'd and still keeps in ghost-Light Of lank Half-nothings his, the thinnest Sprite The sole true @3Something@1 this in Limbo Den It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here frighten men -- For skimming in the wake, it mock'd the care Of the Old Boat-God for his Farthing Fare, Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he neer frown'd blacker on, The skin and skin-pent Druggist crost the Acheron, Styx and with Puriphlegethon Cocytus: The very names, methinks, might thither fright us -- Unchang'd it cross'd & shall, some fated Hour, Be pulverized by Demogorgon's Power And given as poison, to anni'late Souls -- Even now it shrinks them! they shrink in, as Moles (Nature's mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground) Creep back from Light, then listen for its Sound -- See but to dread, and dread they know not why The natural Alien of their negative Eye. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOM O'ROUGHLEY by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THE KING'S JEWEL by PHOEBE CARY GRASS FINGERS by ANGELINA WELD GRIMKE SUMMER LONGINGS by DENIS FLORENCE MCCARTHY SONNET: 16. TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL, MAY 1652 by JOHN MILTON |