Clerihew of Offensive Usage

CARL VAN VECHTEN

Carl Van Vechten
Lost some respect in
The black community
When he claimed immunity.

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin

IT WAS

"It was a strange weight, a presence coming into me -- into a me I had not known was there."

From page 79

Daily Dose

From Byron: Complete Poetical Works, edited by Frederick Page

LOVE AND DEATH

I watched thee when the foe was at our side,
    Ready to strike at him--or thee and me,
Were safety hopeless--rather than divide
    Aught with one loved, save love and liberty.

I watched thee on the breakers, when the rock
    Received our prow, and all was storm and fear,
And bade thee cling to me through every shock;
    This arm would be thy bark, or breast thy bier.

I watched thee when the fever glazed thine eyes,
    Yielding my couch, and stretched me on the ground
When overworn with watching, ne'er to rise
    From thence, if thou an early grave hadst found.

The earthquake came, and rocked the quivering
    And men and nature reeled as if with wine.
Whom did I seek around the tottering hall?
    For thee.  Whose safety first provide for?  Thine

And when convulsive throes denied my breath
    The faultest utterance to my fading thought,
To thee--to thee--e'en in the gasp of death
    My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.

Thus much and more; and yet thou lov'st me not,
    And never wilt!  Love dwells not in our will.
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
    To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.

Daily Dose

From If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin

DESPAIR

"Despair can make one monstrous, but it can also make one noble: and here these children are, in the arena, up for grabs."

From page 152

Daily Dose

From Byron: Complete Poetical Works, edited by Frederick Page

TO EDDLESTON

Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
    Whom Youth and Youth’s affections bound to me;
    Who did for me what none beside have done,
    Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee,
    What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!
    Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
    Who mourns o’er hours which we no more shall see--
    Would they had never been, or were to come!
Would he had ne’er returned to find fresh cause to roam!

Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
    How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
    And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
    But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.
    All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;
    The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend:
    Ne’er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,
    And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
Hath snatched the little joy that Life had yet to lend.

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, stanzas 95 - 96

Daily Dose

From Byron: Complete Poetical Works, edited by Frederick Page

THE CORNELIAN

No specious splendour of this stone
    Endears it to my memory ever;
With lustre only once it shone,
    And blushes modest as the giver.

Some, who can sneer at friendship’s ties,
    Have, for my weakness, oft reprov’d me;
Yet still the simple gift I prize,
    For I am sure, the giver lov’d me.

He offer’d it with downcast look,
    As fearful that I might refuse it;
I told him, when the gift I took,
    My only fear should be, to lose it.

This pledge attentively I view’d,
    And sparkling as I held it near,
Methought one drop the stone bedew’d,
    And, ever since, I’ve lov’d a tear.

Still, to adorn his humble youth,
    Nor wealth nor birth their treasures yield;
But he, who seeks the flowers of truth,
    Must quit the garden, for the field.

‘Tis not the plant uprear’d in sloth,
    Which beauty shews, and sheds perfume;
The flowers, which yield the most of both,
    In Nature’s wild luxuriance bloom.

Had Fortune aided Nature’s care,
    For once forgetting to be blind,
His would have been an ample share,
    If well proportioned to his mind.

But had the Goddess clearly seen,
    His form had fix’d her fickle breast;
Her countless hoards would his have been,
    And none remain’d to give the rest.