Poem for Today

[xoggoth]

not care tuppence for old men
Who sermonise and disapprove.
Suns when they sink can rise again,
But we, when our brief light has shone,
Must sleep the long night on and on

.

Brill sentiments.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Lay your sleeping head
my love
Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope

[Gibbon]

My Lesbia, let us live and love
And not care tuppence for old men
Who sermonise and disapprove.
Suns when they sink can rise again,
But we, when our brief light has shone,
Must sleep the long night on and on.
Kiss me: a thousand kisses, then
A hundred more, and now a second
Thousand and hundred, and now still
Hundreds and thousands more, until
The thousand thousands can’t be reckoned
And we’ve lost track of the amount
And nobody can work us ill
With the evil eye by keeping count.

(Catullus, Poems, in J. Michie (trans.) (1998) Ware: Wordsworth Editions