Monday, March 5, 2012

The Dreamer

What follows now, gentlemen, is a detailed account of what I observed in the study of Mr. Jonathan Milton on the evening of June 18th, 1897, while I was a guest at his home in Bexleyheath:

There were detailed maps of the Moon in various phases,
meticulously inked onto crisp parchments,
along with a small deceased Falco peregrinus
stretched out and pinned to a framed canvas.
An elegant bronze goblet half-filled with rosemary water
stood beside a bowl of rotting pears and pomegranates.
A sputtering white candle, melted down to a mere nub,
had spilled its wax in hardening mounds out upon the desk.
The grey-bearded gentleman was seated there,
with his head resting serenely on the parchments,
and he held a dry feather-quill in his gaunt hand.
White moths with their powdered wings
fluttered like snow against the windowpane,
again and again, out in the slumbering darkness.
The man then stirred and spoke out in his sleep:
O Luna! Luna! Ego veni te hodie nox!

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