VIII: ELIMINATION OF A PICTURE & ITS SUBJECT--CALLED THE FELLER'S MASTER STROKE

by Richard Dadd

At such a book,
His right to look,
I care not to dispute.
Such secrets surely some must know.
All are not saints on earth below.
Or if they are they know the same.
Or are shut out from nature's game.
Banished from nature's book of life,
Because some angel in the strife
Had got the worser fate.
And they close their eyes, that gate –
By which reminders enter.
And in a paradise of fools contented live.
Fays also are not saints, so I must believe
That this and similar frolics they achieve.
The truth is not for all you’ll say.
But that eternal seal it bear,
One might say nay.
Who are the victims of that cruel fate
False secrecy, that sometimes ’tis too late
To find – lost to their race for ever they
In other spheres can understand the light of day –
Next Lubin bending o’er his flame.
Chloe or Phyllis hard to tame.
With wooden sabots round about she’ll clatter.
Churn fairy butter or some such matter.
As to the dairy doth belong.

Whiling and charming time with song.
They’re rustic Lovers rustic in manner.
And Lubin happen is a fairy tanner,
Tanned woodman’s leather coat and cap,
His leggins, all their boots mayhap.
Except his sweethearts they are of wood.
He’d do them too to oblige her if he could.
They are curious in this business you see plainly –
See also next below, two dwarfs – ungainly?
No for the sake of rhyme it fits so well –
We’ll write it down – and after tell
That ’tis deformity approaches near
The truth about this couple here.
A fairy conjuror he who knows a trick
Or two at cards and in the nick –
Of time, can well deceive.
Thus, of your reason you take leave.
Then ’tis that he will do the clever dodge.
Which puzzles many a clownish varhma Hodge.
You think perhaps you don’t do so.
The prayer book so affirms I know –
Just now he offers out to let –
’T’will or ’t’will not be surely split.
Some odds perhaps will give
What fairy coin is – true as I live.
I can’t inform – nor if they betted

Continues Monday, October 25
with Part IX

In the meantime, Return Tomorrow
When The Freezine Exhumes
Its Next Dead Author...