Excerpt from The Divine Comedy of Patriotism
The Divine Comedy of Patriotism.
Life being too short for long story, I write several brief ones
In guise of Court Fool and address them to you: though impersonal,
If you find yourself in them the fun will be just so much larger,
I mean with you in them as citizen, statesman or people,
The court of the jester being wider than that of Our Lady.
This is written for any year that resembles the present,
And as such must recur, why, my tales must return with the period.
In their progress a humor peculiar may frequently touch you;
One of interest when satire or ridicule mainly is needed;
Immortal by fits, as a thing of a value revolving.
From the easy coil and the limber trip of the metre
Infer not a poem: I vow this is comedy merely;
Spread over a vast lot of life, but still strictly comedy;
Presenting new views of the worth and the sport of stump speeches,
Too little known in the lands at once speechful and stumpless.
As a fact I am trembling to think of the wrath of the poets,
Dear Douglases tender and true of the bardic afflatus,
Who will damn my misuse of the verse of the first of all poets,
Chronological foredad of those who must chant or die panting.
"Tis the spring of the stanza that carries the leap of the meaning;
No rhetorical prose has an equal arc of significance.
That is why I select the most rolling and flowing of measures;
Not heroics on wooden-leg march, but the cadence of ballad.
My narratives move without plot of the old stagey species,
Without being classic of frame or of classified tableaux,
Although fluent to read; full of dashes at follies and failings.
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