Poems

I hate books that deceive with golden gears embossed on sepia sleeves, with titles like, “Her Majesty’s Robot” or “The Clockwork Twin” luring one into a world of gleaming ticks, and then it turns out that the plot just focuses on some boring boy with a stretched-down face and starched shirtcuffs who wants to build an automaton from diagrams in old texts and has a racing heart and feels frightened sometimes, when crouching in corridors but never understandably aggravated with himself or pointlessly giddy at the sight of a mechanical butterfly or canstack-bumpingly clumsy or interested in the passing...

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(as first performed in Stevenson’s Music Hall, 1886) Oh, my name is Doctor Jekyll, and I am a fancy swell With my weskit and my top hat, and my coach and four as well My patients all are dukes and lords; they pay me by the ton But when you are a pious cove, what’s left to spend it on? Henry Jekyll is my name, sirs! Edward Hyde, it is me name, lads! One sip of my potion makes the conscience sleep at night It’s Harley Street till dusk, my boys, but Whitechapel till dawn! Now some folks like...

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Like shade that moves, the flying groves pass with majesty’s grace. You cannot see the smoke from her stoves, so gentle is her pace. Over our heads, covered with leaves, the ship is on her road. Each of us watches and silently grieves, staggering still with his load. They fly away, those marvelous lords, caring no more what they’ve wrought; holding us back with invisible swords, they leave us with scarcely a thought. The zeppelin rises, its leaves drinking air, and floats from the world that it’s made. What are the passengers talking of there, over their chilled lemonade?

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