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From: billy@calico.UUCP (Billy Green)
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: Sonnet #1
Message-ID: <4.UUL1.1#120@calico.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Oct-86 05:02:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: calico.4.UUL1.1#120
Posted: Mon Oct  6 05:02:19 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Oct-86 03:04:45 EDT
Organization: B.K.B. Consulting
Lines: 36


SONNET #1
---------

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."
			--Ralph Waldo Emerson



When I had fears that I might cease to be,
I often sat alone and read for hours.
I asked myself, "To be, or not to be,"
As I sat amongst Coleridge's flowers.
I opened up the book.  I saw the line,
"When I have fears that I may cease to be,"
And thought again.  I thought that thought was mine,
Yet here it stood in print in front of me.
New thoughts seemed scarce--not only out of reach,
But out of the question.  I stopped and thought again.
I thought of Prufrock pondering his peach.
Then I looked back upon the words of men
And met a traveller from an antique land who said,
"The poetry of earth is never dead."




(With apologies to Keats, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Eliot, 
Shelley, and to Keats again.)


Billy Green
{seismo, decvax, philabs, akgua}!mcnc!calico!billy

"Lord, it's just like living in a pome, (sic)  
I like calling North Carolina home."