Amplified Dog

In Unromantic Times

36 in UnromAnTiCTimes no wind swirls around this house, making The banshee-windows whine, shaking the door like frankenstein’s wretch trying to break in. street lamps illuminate no sad-eyed-girlfrom -a-good-family, who, having trudged miles in a downpour to bear her son (destined for greatness), dies among strangers. our highwaymen do not wear french cocked hats, or lace collars, or coats of claret velvet, or boots up to the thigh over cinnamon breeches of doe-skin.Young gentlemen don’t sweep through fifty-room chateausWith -colonnades, their red silk capes flapping behind. They do not press one hand (palm out) To their foreheads. in their studies, at rosewood desks inlaid with mother-of-pearl, They do not weep over hector’s speech To Andromache. They do not write, With quill pens, sonnets to their cruel beloved, or sip sorrow like plum wine snatched from corsairs on the China sea. They don’t give up titles and lands, then, slammed by rain hard as grapeshot, dash off to die in some noble foreign war. There is no war Worth dying for, no glorious pain. ...