If thou wilt ease thine heart Of love and all its smart, Then sleep, dear, sleep; And not a sorrow Hang any tear on your eyelashes; Lie still and dee… - Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Old Adam, the carrion crow, The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow Under his tail and over his crest; And through every feather Leak’d the wet weather; And the bough swung under his nest; For his beak it was heavy with marrow. Is that the wind dying? O no; It’s only two devils, that blow Through a murderer’s bones, to and fro, In the ghosts’ moonshine.Ho! Eve, my grey carrion wife, When we have supped on kings’ marrow,
Where shall we drink and make merry our life? Our nest it is queen Cleopatra’s skull, ’Tis cloven and crack’d, And batter’d and hack’d, But with tears of blue eyes it is full: Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo! Is that the wind dying? O no; It’s only two devils, that blow Through a murderer’s bones, to and fro, In the ghosts’ moonshine.

A lake
Is a river curled and asleep like a snake.

Why, Rome was naked once, a bastard smudge,
Tumbled on straw, the denfellow of whelps,
Fattened on roots, and, when a-thirst for milk,
He crept beneath and drank the swagging udder
Of Tyber’s brave she-wolf; and Heaven’s Judea
Was folded in a pannier.