Showtime

A well-known poem re-written on a pompous and prolix style

A sad lament in poesy I tender,

A melancholy song in sorrow sung

Of one, an infant, feminine by gender,

Upon whose brow, betwixt her eyebrows, hung

A forelock drooping like a question mark

Inverted – upside down; and juxtaposed;

As pleasure is to pain, or light to dark,

So were her ways – one moment in the throes

Of disobedience beyond the ken

Of human comprehension, like some wild,

Unmanageable animal – and then

Reversion to behaviour meek and mild;

Thus can vicissitude confuse and vex

The soul should vice and virtue intertwine,

As when an infant of the fairer sex

Acts dual parts – now devilish, now divine.

(‘There was a little girl’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)