Hey...at least I'm updating!
I found this over at Redheaded Ramblings.
1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don’t name the band, nor the album-title.
Hey you
are you in there?
I'm stuck outside you
we could use
one another
another like you
you be my passerby
I'll be your new one to pass through
screws inside turn so tight
turning on you
I'm hanging on you
No Googling allowed!
SnoozeButtonJim has a hilarious entry here.
My personal favorite:
2. World Championship Wriesling
..much like Courtney Love's legs...
via The Venomous One
and why it's my favorite Hemingway novel.
Yes, it's a posthumous publication and not as widely praised as his other works such as The Sun Also Rises and For Whom The Bell Tolls but it's, I feel, his greatest work.
Garden of Eden was a labor of love for Hemingway, a novel he worked on on-and-off over the last 15 years of his life between other books that were published such as The Old Man and the Sea. Some critics who have read the entire unfinished manuscript at the JFK office were unhappy with the way it was shortened to a third of its original size for the final published version. But I think the Scribners editor did a great job condensing to make it such a beautiful book. That 'one true sentence' Hemingway strove so hard to write has never been so apparent as in this simple prose. Easy to read is hard to write and I'm in awe of Hemingway.
Here is an example of simple but utterly brilliant writing from Garden of Eden:
They were always hungry but they ate very well. They were hungry for breakfast which they ate at the cafe, ordering brioche and cafe au lait and eggs, and the type of preserve that they chose and the manner in which the eggs were to be cooked was an excitement. They were always so hungry for breakfast that the girl often had a headache until the coffee came. But the coffee took the headache away. She took her coffee without sugar and the young man was learning to remember that. On this morning there was brioche and red raspberry preserve and the eggs were boiled and there was a pat of butter that melted as they stirred them and salted them lightly and ground pepper over them in the cups. They were big eggs and fresh and the girl's were not cooked quite as long as the young man's. He remembered that easily and he was happy with his which he diced up with the spoon and ate with only the flow of the butter to moisten them and the fresh early morning texture and the bite of the coarsely ground pepper grains and the hot coffee and the chickory-fragrant bowl of cafe au lait.
I know a lot of people are dying but this story really hurts.
I watched as Pat Tillman was sent off to war in a huge fanfare after turning down his NFL contract with the Cardinals. I had a lump in my throat as I thought about this brave man who is going to defend our country instead of getting multiple women pregnant, murdering (allegedly) his pregnant girlfriend/limo driver/friend's dog, smoking weed/crack, driving around in his Escalade/Lexus/Mercedes and tearing up hotel rooms like a lot of his NFL counterparts.
Just fucking sad.
Update: Sgt. Hook says it better than I ever could.
I stole this from Kelley who "stole" it from someone else. I guess memes really aren't stealable.
The books I've read are in bold. My ignorance is in regular type.
Shit! I thought I was more well-read than this.
Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son
It's pitcher takin time!
I had Zoe and Crash groomed yesterday. It's a huge deal because for a month, my dogs walk around looking like street dwellers but after $50 and 5 hours at the groomers, they end up looking like they are supposed to look. This lasts for a few days until Crash decides to raid the trash can and stick his fluffy face into an open can of spagettios to lick the last vestiges of tomato sauce from inside the can or until Zoe finds it necessary to roll around on the decaying carcass of something in my parents' backyard.
Anywho, I took this opportunity to take some great pics of the dogs.
By the time it was over, I was out of breath and sweating like a freakin ditch digger.
These dogs don't understand the meaning of "Stay there, Sweetie...no, no, don't get up...stay there. Look at Mommy! Look here! No! No! Don't jump down! Dammit!!! Quit moving around. Look at the fucking camera!"
What once seemed like an exciting event that had the dogs wagging their tails and jumping up and down quickly turned into three dogs looking scared with their tails between their legs.
I did get some decent pictures that I'll upload this weekend and share with the class.
Am I the only won who gets a little shiver of excitement when I see Anna has updated her blog?
The crazy chick has outdone herself with two different entries. Here and here.
I think I love her (In a total unlesbianistic way).
Holy crap! How does Kelley do it??
The Sac ROCKS! (Especially cuz I'm in it!) ;)
And I'm linking to Kelley because she deserves it.
Yes, boys and girls...it's that time again! It's spring and terribly close to my birthday so get ready for My Favorite Things. If Oprah can do it, so can I!
And that's all I can think of...for now.
Dear IRS,
I've come to expect so much from you. Through the years, you've been there for me. All I have to do is log on or place a phone call or fill out a form and you send me joy. Joy beyond my wildest expectations. So much joy that you've allowed me to pay off credit cards, shopped til I dropped or even to go on vacation. It was YOU that made Disney World possible, IRS...it was you.
2003 was a bad year for me. Everything that could go wrong in a year went HORRIBLY wrong. I was unemployed for a year. I had family and personal problems that would curl your gorgeous crew cut.
Thankfully, 2003 ended and a new beautiful year began. Things started to change and life started to sparkle again....that is until recently.
IRS, I logged on. I tried to reach you through Turbo Tax. I filled out your forms. I waited with breathless anticipation as my slow dial up connection loaded the final results.....
$79
Seventy-nine dollars.
Is that all I am worth to you now? After all I've done for you? After all the student loan interest? The FICA and the other shit that I give to you every two weeks? This is how you repay me?
Well, SCREW YOU, IRS!
I won't be your doormat. I won't run when you call. I won't worship at your dark green alter any longer.
I'll teach you a lesson, you pencil neck, pocket protector, taped glasses, highwater pant, white sock wearing dork.
I'm not filing until April 15 at 11:59pm!
Stick that in your abacus and smoke it!
Sincerely,
The Broke-A$$ Bitch
I stepped back in time a little last night.
I saw The Darkness in concert at the Verizon Wireless Theater.
This brought me back to those highschool days of hairbands and power ballads, real rock concerts where chicks flashed their tits to the band and where the word motherfucker is chanted by the audience at the request of the lead singer.
The venue was small and intimate, the perfect location for a band who is not widely known but loved by those who do know them.
The crowd of mostly teenagers in General Admission went crazy for this over-the-top rock band. They cheered after each of the lead singer's constume changes, including the much talked about pink-striped unitard.
Lead singer, Justin Hawkins, struts around the stage like a post-HIV Freddy Mercury and screeches twice as well.
This show was just plain fun despite the LONG line in chilly, windy, on-the-cusp-of-raining weather, the seats being so small and close together that you have no choice but to become frighteningly intimate with the person next to you and the frozen margarita that I spilled down my pant leg and into my shoe!
The opening band, The Wild Hearts, were awesome.
Somehow, they blended this death metal vibe with some great melodies and it freakin works!
After the show, I felt bad that I didn't hot-roll, tease and aqua-net my hair, slap on some metallic blue eyeshadow and a pair of acid-washed jeans and rock out like it was 1987!
I stole this from Sheila who stole this from someone else.
So here goes mine...
A Rare Lemming Indulgence
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
"During the day he would take care of his fighting cocks and she would do frame embroidery with her mother."
(from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
It sounds both dirty and boring.
I love Kilgore Trout.
I know too much about Kilgore Trout.
I know that he use to jerk off in the bathroom at work..at a PUDDING plant, no less! (I'll never look at vanilla pudding the same way again)
Yes, this is TMI but it's not a surprise. Every guy I know has rubbed one out in the company bathroom at least once or twice. Some do it regularly.
I'm not sure what it is about the male brain (the one located in the lower sector) that makes it mandatory to masturbate where ever he might be. I don't know about all women but I've never been sitting at my desk, doing whatever in the hell it is I do, and felt the urge to run into the shitter to pleasure myself.
Maybe it's the thrill of knowing that you're choking your chicken while on the company dime.
Whatever it is...if the majority of men masturbate in the bathroom at work, won't you look at them differently when they quietly slip into the men's room tomorrow?
This whole blog moving thing is invading my dreams.
The lovely Jim is helping me move my archives from blogger to the new digs. We exchanged a few emails yesterday and then I promptly went to bed and dreamed about him....well...it was sorta about him.
I was meeting Jim at the mall so I could take him to my "blog"(???). However, Jim wasn't Jim, he looked just like Heath Ledger!
We walked through the mall and then into a warehouse which led us to a boat.
It was my sister and brother-in-law's boat. They were going to take us out in the gulf.
My mom and my nephew Michael were there. Michael who is now a 5'10" 14 yr old was just a little boy in the dream.
As we were sailing along, Erick, my bro-in-law, tells us that we're going through a hurricane. It did occur to me that he was an idiot to take us out in a hurricane but we all donned our life jackets. Mine was just a thin, suede vest that I'm sure would be PLENTY of help in the water!
Then we hooked ourselves to the hull of the boat so we wouldn't be thrown overboard. I put Michael between my mom and myself so we could protect him.
Jim/Heath was pretty freaked out and he kept calling his wife on his cell to tell her he loved her. I'm sure it's easy to get cell reception in the middle of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. (Can you hear me now? Good!)
Huge swells were Crashing over us and I was so frightened for all of us and I was hoping that my mom and I could hold on to Michael. I kept imagining the horror of watching either one of them being thrown overboard and drowning.
Just then the boat made a horrid retching sound and I sat up in bed. That retching sound was the cat puking in the floor. (That one was for you, Key!)
So, kids, what does this dream mean? Does it mean this blog is a sinking ship and now Jim is going down too because he is helping me??
I finished Life of Pi a few days ago. I had originally started reading it several months back but just couldn't get into it. As with most books, I tried again later and found I could focus on the story a bit better.
This book was ROUGH!
It's about a young boy/man who is shipwrecked while he and his family are traveling from India to Canada.
This isn't just a normal Tom Hanks shipwrecking, however. The main character, Pi, is adrift on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger for 227 days.
Yann Martel, the author, uses beautiful language to tell an ugly, terrifying story. The blood and guts described in the novel just oozes honesty.
When Pi was starving, I felt my stomach growl from hunger. When he was finally rescued, I felt his relief, until I learned the horrible truth. No...you'll have to read it for yourself.
I will read this book again because I know I will discover new things with each read. The ending surprised me and as I thought back to the story, I see where the author purposely misled the reader.
Read Life of Pi if you enjoy getting emotionally involved and you don't mind blood, intestines and rotting death.
I'm still being a light blogger.
I just took on more hours at the office and I'm just not use to like working n stuff.
MT is so confusing to me but I think that's just my ADD talking. For some reason people with ADD tend to not understand a part of something until they understand the WHOLE thing. That's me.
So many wonderfully generous people have offered their help and I will be taking them up on their offers soon.
I have no FUCKING clue about MT so I'll just post like this until I figure it out.
I have never had a blog that wasn't pink so this is very strange. The first thing I'm going to do is pink this place up!
Thanks to the amazing Pixy for doing all of this in his bid for world domination errrr...out of the goodness of his heart!
And thanks goes the adorable Jim for nominating me for this prestigious honor!
Robert Browning
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.
Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
And as for our Corporation—shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.
An hour they sate in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell;
I wish I were a mile hence!
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain—
I'm sure my poor head aches again
I've scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!"
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
"Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?"
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"
"Come in!"—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in—
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire:
Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!"
He advanced to the council-table:
And, "Please your honours," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper."
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the selfsame cheque;
And at the scarf's end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
"Yet," said he, "poor Piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats;
And, as for what your brain bewilders,
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?"
"One? fifty thousand!"—was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.
Into the street the Piper stepped,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,
Wherein all plunged and perished!
- Save one who, stout a Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As he, the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press's gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out 'Oh, rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!'
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce and inch before me,
Just as methought it said 'Come, bore me!'
- I found the Weser rolling o'er me."
You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
"Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!"—when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"
A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And half the money would replenish
Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
"Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
"Our business was done at the river's brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what's dead can't come to life, I think.
So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But, as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty.
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!"
The Piper's face fell, and he cried
"No trifling! I can't wait, beside!
I've promised to visit by dinner-time
Bagdat, and accept the prime
Of the Head Cook's pottage, all he's rich in,
For having left, in the Calip's kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor—
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe to another fashion."
"How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I'll brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!"
Once more he stepped into the street;
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.
The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by—
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper's back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack,
And the wretched Council's bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However he turned from South to West,
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
"He never can cross that mighty top!
He's forced to let the piping drop,
And we shall see our children stop!"
When, lo, as they reached the mountain's side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say, all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,—
"It's dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me:
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the Hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!"
Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher's pate
A text which says, that Heaven's Gate
Opes to the Rich at as easy rate
As the needle's eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
"And so long after what happened here
On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six":
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper's Street—
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great Church-Window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away;
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.
So, Willy, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially Pipers:
And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise.