• A poet, in his youthful prime,
    Bought a pencil for a dime,
    And carving sharp the leaden tip,
    With his hand began to grip.

    He placed its point upon the page,
    And let the tool work him a wage.
    With dizzy speed he scrawled a line,
    And many more, exceeding fine.

    He wrote about the mountains grey,
    About the blooming buds of May,
    The oceans deep and chasms dark,
    And Peter’s famous living barque.

    He wrote of holiness on earth,
    About the Lord, His infant birth,
    How He would meet with only pain,
    And Mary born without a stain.

    But then a serpent’s tongue so sweet,
    Tempted him with drink and meat,
    With flesh so supple and so young,
    The pangs within his loins were sung.

    He drank good wine until his mind,
    Behaved as if his eyes were blind,
    And ate his meat and ate his bread,
    In quantities a King would dread.

    He murdered men with pen and sword,
    And with fell chaos struck a chord.
    He envied all who envied none,
    And all his neighbours did he shun.

    His sin was like a pot’s o’erflow,
    And to the priests he would not go.
    His pencil scribbled madlly then,
    He even went and bought a pen.

    With human blood his words ran foul,
    And scratched they were in phlegm and bowel.
    His humours thus upset, recoiled,
    And all his passions doubly boiled.

    His words like acid ceased to light,
    His listener’s minds were filled with fright.
    A hermit’s life was forced upon,
    This poet in his nice salon.

    The priests decried him in the street,
    And so his curse was brought complete.
    He had ‘til then just hated God,
    But now he called Him glorious fraud!

    Then rank and pitying were his words,
    Like many noising little birds.
    They nagged, assaulted, tore away,
    The very Life within the day.

    A vow he took, a solemn oath,
    That all but ‘Reason’ should be loath,
    He syllogised his way to hell,
    And bloated, his great malice fell.

    For many years he pencilled still,
    ‘Til old and aged and frail and chill.
    His body failed and mind went sour.
    He slowly died within his tower.

    Still neither did his penning cease,
    Nor gave the shoddy paper peace.
    He wrote while in the throes of death.
    He wrote until his dying breath.

    And just before that breath released,
    And in the presence of a priest,
    From out his bleak and dark despair,
    Came forth a light Ausonian air!

    For Truth is not in forms and modes,
    Nor in any atheistic odes,
    But in the sweet and holy Lord,
    Who gave us all He could afford.

    Which — I might add — is all there is.
    He even graced that Son of His,
    To a great death upon a tree,
    Blood flowing forth and washing me.

    The poet saw his erring ways,
    And with the holy abbé prayed.
    He came back to the domus proud,
    Before the Dreadful King he bowed.

    He bent his head, the purple kissed,
    The sovereign Lord he so had missed,
    And then his humble pencil stopped,
    And from his weary hand was dropped.

    He let great notes of joy ring out,
    And mighty was his glorious shout,
    Te Deum laudamus! he sang,
    To Him, Who on the cross did hang.

    Te Dominum confitemur!
    To God he let his soul refer,
    And so his pencil was retired,
    And graced by God he too expired.