mewithoutYou - Flee, Thou Matadors! Lyrics

ever feel like noah on an overcast day?

KING OF SPAIN AND QUEEN OF PORTUGALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Right? :D

The instrumental second half of this song is absolute perfection

When they play this live, everyone is in awe. Monumental.

Hallelujah for this band and keeping it fresh with new amazing songs! You’re the best MwY.

FERDINAND [VIII]:
You the coverclouds in a midnight sky
I, a little snowflake waxwing high
Erring on the delicate side:
Who can mark the hour our soul sick friendships die?
MARIA [the pious]:
Ever felt like Noah on an overcast day?
David, take down your harp and play
FERDINAND:
You hatched your little plan when the first fell through?
The wicked in you ran, though none pursued!
MARIA:
You’re toeing a precarious line
[momentary taste of almost unmediated mind]
Silk shirt for a sackcloth king---
David, take down your harp and sing!
FERDINAND:
Clockwork drama in a Josten’s ring
Ever on the verge of catastrophe…

***************************
King of Spain, Queen of Portugal
***************************

MARIA [the mad]:
I ran to the sea but the sea wouldn’t hide me
The oceans agree there was no one to hide!
Will my story give way to the weight of its gravity?
~self-appointed-cop-spokesman-of-the-end-times~
FERDINAND [to the smell of blood]:
Knockneed step and a bent-back spine
No sense of direction besides...
MARIA [unfazed]:
Patterns in the clouds over lake Cascade!
Message in the sounds of the Air Force planes!
[offers claims on an extravagant scale in
Elaborate (if laminated poster board) display about chemtrails]
Tinky’s harp on the wall next to Janis Joplin!
FERDINAND [intoxicated with purple]:
Man, I coulda sworn that I saw
The cosmos in the livestock straw...
MARIA [neither pious nor deranged]:
Early cartography sea creature dragon and all?

****************
King of Spain, our songs proclaim
That you’re Queen of Portugal
King of Spain, our prayers in vain
Till you’re Queen of Portugal
Owls now sail toward seas of Africa
---flee, thou matadors!
Courts of dandelions
Wars of Oranges have conquered us!

Man, this is good

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hp4Bjh5ZrM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m48s

"Bescheidenheit ist der Anfang aller Vernunft.

Sehnsucht ist erstickte Freude, Wehmut ist stumpfer Schmerz.

Nicht die Natur, nur der Mensch kennt Erbarmen, aber nicht oft läßt er es walten.

Wer der Welt ein Heiland zu sein glaubt, thut gut, mit dreiunddreißig Jahren zu sterben.

»Der Mensch wollte sein wie ein Gott,« erzählt die Mythe und sie sagt die Wahrheit. Gegen das Leid des Lebens bäumte sich der Mensch auf und verlangte nach Allmacht, um es auszutilgen; wie aber käme ein Teilchen zur Macht ob allem, wie meistert ein Sandkorn den Berg, ein Tropfe die Woge? Da fühlte er sich überlegen, indem er das Leid tragen lernte und nun fragte er: »Kann Gott auch leiden?« Und wäre ihm die Frage nicht bejaht worden, er hätte keinen Gott mehr geglaubt.

(Dezember 1881.)

Die Götter sterben – aber der Gott im Menschen, der sich auflehnt gegen das Häßliche, Verderbliche, Gemeine, der stirbt nicht.

Ueber das, was oft angeblich zu Gottes Ehre geschah und geschieht, muß sich der Teufel freuen.

Das normale Gehirn. Wer hat es denn? Vielleicht nicht einer der gegenwärtig Lebenden. Der Klügste rast unbewußt – in den Ideen seiner Zeit.

Das Leben hat nicht mehr Wert, als wir ihm geben.

Die Welt wurde nicht, die Welt wird.

Künstler wird nur der, der sich vor seinem eigenen Urteil fürchtet.

Wenn ich meine Werke überdenke und betrachte, so merke ich erst, wie jung ich war und wie jung ich leider noch bin; wenn ich aber meine Zeitgenossen betrachte, so merke ich zu meinem Leidwesen, daß die Herren jünger sind.

Echte Kunst hat immer Moral, nur die Zuhörer und Beschauer haben oft keine.

Die Tugend trägt nie zur Unterhaltung bei, das Laster zuweilen, die Dummheit immer.

Die Menge, immer in der Not feige, im Glücke übermütig. Dir aber gehören alle anderen, allen anderen gehörst du zu dieser Menge, jeder für jeden gehört dazu und so ist das Urteil über uns alle gefällt.

Die Gefahr des Pessimismus besteht darin, daß er müde macht und eine politische Reaktion erleichtert.

Das Albernste wäre es wohl, wenn ein Mann die Wetterfahne festbinden, die Fensterrahmen festnageln ließe, um behaupten zu können, es gehe kein Wind. Was thut die Staatsgewalt oft anderes in drohender Zeit, wenn sie offenes Reden und Meinen verbietet?

Judenhetzen, Maurenvertreibungen, Hexen- und Ketzerprozesse waren Kapitalsregelungen.

Fehler parlamentarischer Regierungen erklären sich leicht. Die Liberalen nehmen das Volk für klüger, die Reaktionären für dümmer, als es ist.

Die Friedensliga. Sie ist den Gedanken der Zeit, nicht aber den Thatsachen entsprechend. Ihr habt nicht die Macht, alle Völker durch Friedenslieder einzulullen. Leider nicht. Der aber, der es vermöchte, ein einzelnes, es wäre das edelste, einzuschläfern, daß es unbereit, waffenlos unter den andern dastünde, er wäre nicht ein Freund der Menschheit, sondern nur ein Feind dieses Volkes. So steht es leider. Darum keine Friedenspredigten, keinen Kosmopolitismus, sondern Betonung des Nationalgefühls. Der Krieg wird schließlich den Krieg unmöglich machen. Nicht die Milde, der Greuel, der himmelschreiende Greuel war von je der Lehrer der Völker.

Ist Talent, so ist auch die Schönheit ein Verdienst.

Gott und Liebe, die beiden mißbrauchtesten Ideen.

Die Legitimisten brauchen einen Herrn, um Diener haben zu können.

Lustige Leute lachen machen, ist kein Verdienst, aber die Falten ernster Stirnen glätten, halte ich für eines."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium
https://youtu.be/AyzxNSAXNEU
<345

"You'll Live, But I'll Not...
You'll live, but I'll not; perhaps,
The final turn is that.
Oh, how strongly grabs us
The secret plot of fate.

They differently shot us:
Each creature has its lot,
Each has its order, robust, --
A wolf is always shot.

In freedom, wolves are grown,
But deal with them is short:
In grass, in ice, in snow, --
A wolf is always shot.

Don't cry, oh, friend my dear,
If, in the hot or cold,
From tracks of wolves, you'll hear
My desperate recall."

"Cuando ese tiempo se cumpla en el que a mi corazón yo falte estarán ausente lo que marcaron los sentimientos.



Yo por las venas de este cuerpo marcado, el color envenenado, las luchas invisibles , de los que intentan servirte, no es tu culpa, tus pétalos son hermosos, es el brillo de tu rostro, que conquista, lo curioso de los hombres, que se aprovechan cuando una mujer sufre.



Aunque mi vida se ponga de cabeza estaré sonriente yo aun el sol no se asome en mis peores días no sufriré por mal urgente, mas la vida me traerá sufrir y felicidad y solo me restara vivirla, con toda mi bondad.





Pateticos su sentimiento, la bandera del deseo deberás tu vencer, mi mente he de temer, de pensamientos, encelados, el macabro pensar del celo,de la mente débil y persistente que se encarga de fiaría la confianza, y la comprensión que apodera la razón, y mantenerme en el amor.



Y en mis ilusiones sublimes a las que apodados pensamientos veía como , regalabas la luna, como en la conquista de los hombres tu hermosura presumas, mi mente traicionando lo que es mi legado, causando en la noche que asesine el pasado, no siempre en vida mostré , lo oscuro del miedo, pero pienso e imagino que es a causa de los ego.



Dulce flor , colorido amor, agua refrescante son tus palabras el miedo de no tenerte, trae consigo un mar de espinas oxidadas, del olvido al miedo, del odio a lo ciego amante de los lejos, la mente putrefacta de pensamiento, pérfidos.



Pasaron los 10 inviernos, murieron los soberbios que arrancaron de mi corazón el perdón tierno, un recuerdo , una foto un cuadro que marca, el orgullo roto, de donde saco mi amor, de donde saco el perdón sin saber que lo que cumple fue objeto de mi misma traición.



Aunque la vida se rompa en pedazos , y el mundo acabe en bombazos, de la palabra dicha, al dicho escrito, del camino difícil, al amor imposible, continuare amando con ímpetu y fuerza, por que la inspiracion de mi devenga. y por ti mi corazón detengas.





Una palabra dio el comienzo de una historia,dentro del juego de miradas, que en el mundo nos encontraban, perdidos por lo mismo, escribiendo al desamor, vagando por el túnel del dolor, todo desapareció. Descubriendo caminos nuevos ,desapareciendo ya los miedos.



En la nube del deseo , me ahogo con el silencio, las palabras son tu cuerpo, expresando el arte del coqueteo, una caricia que se vuelve tu juramento, un juramento que se vuelve un compromiso , y el compromiso de amarnos como vicio.





Cuando dormimos a veces puede ser la realidad coherente de un corazón inconsciente ya cuando despertamos vivimos en un sueño desesperado, jugando el papel de estar a tu lado, viviendo las mentiras, amarte es mi pecado.



Que sea yo juzgado del decir de las voces, de mi ninguno consigo ningún roce ame hasta sufrir, sufrí hasta llorar, llore hasta sangrar, del arrepentimiento vivo , me fui yo a descansar.



Esa sensación que va mas fuerte de lo descrito, las mismas que mi sangre en un papel han escrito, ocupa en las las lunas lo que mi suerte a permitido, dulce lágrima que me acompaña en la alcoba, pesada y transparente como agua.



El tiempo a pasado , el deseo no a mermado, cada vez que nos encontramos, como la música nos manifestamos, sincronizadas nuestras notas, que juntamos nuestras bocas coordinados en el sexo , este día es mi lamento.



Si la imagen de mi mismo e visto en mi espejo, el mismo que me encara con mis miedos los miedos de perderte, de no tenerte, el solo pensarlo, me trae lo amargo y absurdo, de un bastardo.



Hago un pacto al amor, me ato a ti con pasión, lo alto de la nube lo profundo del mar no hay forma en si mismas que pueda explicar, lo amplio y reverente que quiero amar, amaré por lo que deseé, amaré por que eres fiel, te amaré por las cosas bonitas y te amaré por verte bien."

: A Chamada da Néboa :
"Qué sabemos nós que non saiban as pedras, a xiada e o sol, ou os Urcos do son. Verbas do luar, bicos dende o alén, e os susurros das Mouras despiden o xerán. A seguinte mañán, o seguinte solpor,
desacougo no ar, e bágoas no chan. Chamemos ás néboas que carregan a luz, pois miña é a labor de pasala ás túas mans. Ollando ó redor, mais aló dos salgueiros,
xa non queda máis que marchar diste lar. Deixemos ista terra ás fillas do mar, que fan o amor, e pelexan a dor."

The March Into Virginia
by Herman Melville
Ending in the First Manassas July, 1861

"Did all the lets and bars appear
To every just or larger end,
Whence should come the trust and cheer?
Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—
Age finds place in the rear.
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
The champions and enthusiasts of the state:
Turbid ardors and vain joys
Not barrenly abate—
Stimulants to the power mature,
Preparatives of fate.
Who here forecasteth the event?
What heart but spurns at precedent
And warnings of the wise,
Contemned foreclosures of surprise?
The banners play, the bugles call,
The air is blue and prodigal.
No berrying party, pleasure-wooed,
No picnic party in the May,
Ever went less loth than they
Into that leafy neighborhood.
In Bacchic glee they file toward Fate,
Moloch's uninitiate;
Expectancy, and glad surmise
Of battle's unknown mysteries.
All they feel is this: 't is glory,
A rapture sharp, though transitory,
Yet lasting in belaureled story.
So they gayly go to fight,
Chatting left and laughing right.
But some who this blithe mood present,
As on in lightsome files they fare,
Shall die experienced ere three days are
spent—
Perish, enlightened by the vollied glare;
Or shame survive, and, like to adamant,
The throe of Second Manassas share."

With Joseph Brant in Canajoharie
A new poem by Paul Muldoon
PAUL MULDOON
in memory of Richard Wilbur

I stood with Brant in Canajoharie
where the Mohawk river finds its way through that narrow pass
and into “the pot that washes itself”.
We’d already scrubbed our tin plates with sand
and were now enjoying an infusion based on choke-cherries,
red willow, and sweet-grass.
“The river”, he gestured, “has it within it to slough off

the detritus of the age – boatloads of beaver pelts, bales
of barley straw and salt hay amassed
by Palatine hay-hoarders,
truck beds, sandalwood, pig-lead, corn bottled and canned,
home truths, veritable stockpiles
of oil and natural gas
to which we once imagined ourselves inheritors,

French hens, turtle doves, submarine-launched Tomahawks,
relics of auld decency such as the demitasse
from which I drank coffee when I found myself in the halfpenny
place with George III, grandees who grandstand,
diktat-spouting demagogues,
Big Mouth Billy Bass
mouthing ‘Take Me To The River’, cargoes of ebony

and dry persimmons, Eliza Pinckney’s indigo dress, Indian-killers
who believe in the idea of an underclass
that threatens our egalitarian
principles, white supremacists sporting swastika arm-bands,
dead batteries, old tires, fridges, Styrofoam beer coolers,
kudos-seekers, kiss-ass
Republican senators – all swilling about in that cauldron

just as back when I was in my prime
and dined here almost exclusively on bear-fat flavored with sassafras.
The river still comes in at a rampage, still goes out as a runnel.
It persuades me that our native land
may seem to be filled to the brim –
may seem, indeed, to have reached an almost total impasse –
yet retain the capacity for its own renewal.”

Fairy-tale or truth, it's all the same.
Long ago into the world it came,
Ever since adults dreamed of life's dawning,
Ever since the first bright star of morning
Set alight the windows of mankind.
Instantly in child eyes you could find
Glimmering of human comprehension.
Look, I face the future, forge ahead,
And it soon becomes a past dimension.
Here am I, I make my own life's thread.
Who am I? Distaff, thread or spinner,
I appoint the road by which is led
Every living man, be he sage or sinner.

You yourself no effort ever spared,
Light's velocity you boldly squared,
Multiplied by mass, you then went tracing
Cosmogonic views that long lay wasting.
On the planets' surfaces you saw
Cities which had vanished long before,
In the tiny micro-world you studied
Rapid particles, vibrating waves.
Here am I, your helmsman and your rudder,
Straight at you I steer my bark unsafe!
I adore a merry dislocation,
Revel when your teeming reason craves
Lightning formulas and speculation!
Well, despite that I am your old friend,
Will you not to Time a hand extend?
Or have you become so very headstrong
That you gash your knees from tumbling headlong
And forget the gesture you once threw
In the face of gods who punished you?
In reply an open challenge give them!
Let your art be simpler and more clear,
Merrier and tauter be the rhythm,
Then be off again! Go on from here
To the limits of imagination,
To the point at which you disappear!"

The third of four posts on Casanova and the affair of Giustiniana Wynne.

In the spring of 1757, now four years into the relationship, Andrea and Giustiniana began seeing each other again in secret but things weren’t the same, especially from Giustiniana’s perspective. What was there for her to look forward to? The future was filled with uncertainty. Her chances of achieving a successful marriage had clearly been dealt a blow. Andrea felt Giustiniana was becoming more distant and he began to fear that he might lose her. Desperate for them to stay together, Andrea began to think the unthinkable: he would marry her, even though to do so would be profoundly against the political and financial interests of the family and, moreover, would have to be approved by the Avogaria di Comun, a body that defended the interests of the Patriciate. The task was not going to be straightforward but initial inquiries gave him room for hope. He calculated that if he could convince the two families to give him their support then the Avogaria would fall into line. But he was playing a dangerous game. If the Avogaria were to reject his petition then his family’s reputation would be damaged. Giustiniana herself was sceptical of their chances and reluctant to raise the matter with her mother. Andrea persisted and eventually, after six months of cajoling, Giustiniana spoke to Lady Wynne who, it turned out, was receptive to the idea. Andrea, meanwhile, was able to win around his own family. Preliminary negotiations regarding a marriage contract now got underway with the Venetian authorities as well as the drawing up of a contract between the families. Things were looking hopeful. Negotiations and enquiries continued into the summer of 1758 and although the lovers were meant to stay apart it was impossible for them not to meet. Then, as with Consul Smith, everything collapsed. Evidence came to light that Lady Wynne, a quarter of a century before and prior to meeting Sir Richard, had given birth to a baby boy out of wedlock. That was the end of that.

Mrs Anna’s disgrace left the Wynne family little option but to try and make a new life elsewhere; it was unlikely that Giustiniana would be able to find a husband in Venice. In October 1758, they began to make their way across Europe to England, via Paris. Giustiniana and Andrea had still not given up hope of finding some way to be together but nonetheless the separation hit them hard:

I wept a great deal [all during the night] and was inconsolable. I made a thousand plans to go back to you if you do not find a way to your Giustiniana. What misery is mine! You are always on my mind, and at this very moment I am kissing your little portrait.

The family arrived in Paris in November 1758 where they were granted permission to stay for fifteen days, later extended to over the winter. The primary goal of Giustiniana and Andrea was to avoid Giustiniana travelling on to London, which would make any future contact between them even more difficult, particularly as England was a Protestant state and presently at war with France. One way was to find a Parisian husband. This time the target was Alexandre Le Riche de la Poupliniere, a fabulously rich tax collector in his sixties whose wife had recently died.

Casanova now re-entered the story. On 1st November 1756 he had broken out of jail and headed for Paris where he met up with Abbe de Bernis, who was Louis XV’s secretary for foreign affairs. De Bernis had befriended Casanova when he was stationed in Venice as the French Ambassador. Like Casanova he was an extravagant libertine. Helped by de Bernis, Casanova had become involved in the founding of a lottery and very quickly made a fortune. He also made a great deal of money through dealings on the Amsterdam bond markets where he negotiated funds for the French government. Apparently, he was so successful he revived the French securities market. He was now something of a celebrity in Paris. It was on the day of his return from this venture that Giustiniana became reacquainted with him. On a visit to the Comedie Italienne, early in January 1759, Giustiniana and her mother heard enthusiastic cheering from a box close by. They looked over and there he was:

My surprise at seeing this family at such a time and place may be imagined. Mdlle. X. C. V. [Giustiniana] saw me directly, and pointed me out to her mother, who made a sign to me with her fan to come to their box … Mdlle. X. C. V. struck me as prettier than ever; and my love, after sleeping for five years, awoke to fresh strength and vigour.
(Casanova’s Memoirs, The Eternal Quest, Chapter VI)

Casanova wasted no time in paying his respects to them at Hotel de Hollande. Giustiniana wrote to Andrea: He is with us every day even though his company does not please me …He is quite full of himself and stupidly pompous. We do, of course, have to be cautious about taking her complaint at face value. Andrea knew Casanova well and Giustiniana would have been very alive to the need to reassure her lover that she was immune to his charms.

Soon, however, Giustiniana had bigger fish to fry. Through the Venetian poet Tommaso Farsetti, who was sweet on her, Giustiniana managed to wangle an invitation to see Poupliniere. Although his wife had died recently, they had been estranged for ten years during which time the tax collector had enjoyed a succession of mistresses. This had led to the evolution of a rather complicated and poisonous household composed of various old mistresses, family members and other hangers on, scheming and manoeuvring against each other. The most influential mistress was Madame de Saint Aubin who for her own reasons befriended Giustiniana and supported her in her seduction of Poupliniere. Within a month he had completely fallen in love with Giustiniana and was keen to move things on and get married. To no-one’s surprise, a campaign to blacken Giustiniana’s name and sabotage the wedding was quickly underway. Anonymous letters were circulated. Giustiniana herself was threatened. Fully aware of what his entourage were capable of Poupliniere dismissed these accusations and ploughed on with the arrangements. The plan was for them to get married in mid-April. There was, however, a problem. Giustiniana was five months pregnant when she met Poupliniere towards the end of January. She may not have known whose the child was. It may have been Andrea’s. But it may also have been the consequence of a brief fling. In the same month, Casanova received her desperate appeal for help."

The Prologue’, and chapters 1 to 10 of ‘Casanova in Paris: The Shadows of the King’ are now freely available here.

27 long form articles on Casanova’s life and times are freely available here.

Jimmy Rose
by Herman Melville
A TIME ago, no matter how long precisely, I, an old man, removed from the country to the city, having become unexpected heir to a great old house in a narrow street of one of the lower wards, once the haunt of style and fashion, full of gay parlors and bridal chambers, but now, for the most part, transformed into counting-rooms and warehouses. There bales and boxes usurp the place of sofas ; daybooks and ledgers are spread where once the delicious breakfast toast was buttered. In those old wards the glorious old soft-warfle days are over.

Nevertheless, in this old house of mine, so strangely spared, some monument of departed days survived. Nor was this the only one. Amidst the warehouse ranges some few other dwellings likewise stood. The street's transmutation was not yet complete. Like those old English friars and nuns, long haunting the ruins of their retreats after they had been despoiled, so some few strange old gentlemen and ladies still lingered in the neighborhood, and would not, could not, might not quit it. And I thought that when, one spring, emerging from my white-blossoming orchard, my own white hairs and white ivory-headed cane were added to their loitering census, that those poor old souls insanely fancied the ward was looking up—the tide of fashion setting back again.

For many years the old house had been occupied by an owner; those into whose hands it from time to time had passed having let it out to various shifting tenants ; decayed old townspeople, mysterious recluses, or transient, ambiguous-looking foreigners.

While from certain cheap furbishings to which the exterior had been subjected, such as removing a fine old pulpit-like porch crowning the summit of six lofty steps, and set off with a broad-brimmed sounding-board overshadowing the whole, as well as replacing the original heavy window shutters (each pierced with a crescent in the upper panel to admit an Oriental and moony light into the otherwise shut-up rooms of a sultry morning in July) with frippery Venetian blinds ; while, I repeat, the front of the house hereby presented an incongruous aspect, as if the graft of modernness had not taken in its ancient stock; still, however it might fare without, within little or nothing had been altered. The cellars were full of great grim, arched bins of blackened brick, looking like the ancient tombs of Templars, while overhead were shown the first-floor timbers, huge, square, and massive, all red oak, and through long eld, of a rich and Indian color. So large were those timbers, and so thickly ranked, that to walk in those capacious cellars was much like walking along a line-of-battle ship's gun-deck.

All the rooms in each story remained just as they stood ninety years ago with all their heavy-moulded, wooden cornices, paneled wainscots, and carved and inaccessible mantels of queer horticultural and zoological devices. Dim with longevity, the very covering of the walls still preserved the patterns of the times of Louis XVI. In the largest parlor (the drawing-room, my daughters called it, in distinction from two smaller parlors, though I did not think the distinction indispensable) the paper hangings were in the most gaudy style. Instantly we knew such paper could only have come from Paris—genuine Versailles paper—the sort of paper that might have hung in Marie Antoinette's boudoir. It was of great diamond lozenges, divided by massive festoons of roses (onions, Biddy the girl said they were, but my wife soon changed Biddy's mind on that head) ; and in those lozenges, one and all, as in an over-arbored garden-cage, sat a grand series of gorgeous illustrations of the natural history of the most imposing Parisian-looking birds; parrots, macaws, and peacocks, but mostly peacocks. Real Prince Esterhazies of birds; all rubies, diamonds and Orders of the Golden Fleece. But, alas ! the north side of this old apartment presented a strange look; half mossy and half mildew; something as ancient forest trees on their north sides, to which particular side the moss most clings, and where, they say, internal decay first strikes. In short, the original resplendence of the peacocks had been sadly dimmed on that north side of the room, owing to a small leak in the eaves, from which the rain had slowly trickled its way down the wall, clean down to the first floor. This leak the irreverent tenants, at that period occupying the premises, did not see fit to stop, or rather, did not think it worth their while, seeing that they only kept their fuel and dried their clothes in the parlor of the peacocks. Hence many of the glowing birds seemed as if they had their princely plumage bedraggled in a dusty shower. Most mournfully their starry trains were blurred. Yet so patiently and so pleasantly, nay, here and there so ruddily did they seem to hide their bitter doom, so much of real elegance still lingered in their shapes, and so full, too, seemed they of a sweet engaging pensiveness, meditating all day long, for years and years, among their faded bowers, that though my family repeatedly adjured me (especially my wife, who, I fear, was too young for me) to destroy the whole hen-roost, as Biddy called it, and cover the walls with a beautiful, nice, genteel, cream-colored paper, despite all entreaties, I could not be prevailed upon, however submissive in other things.

But chiefly would I permit no violation of the old parlor of the peacocks or room of roses (I call it by both names) on account of its long association in my mind with one of the original proprietors of the mansion the gentle Jimmy Rose.

Poor Jimmy Rose !

He was among my earliest acquaintances. It is not many years since he died ; and I and two other tottering old fellows took hack, and in sole procession followed him to his grave.

Jimmy was born a man of moderate fortune. In his prime he had an uncommonly handsome person; large and manly, with bright eyes of blue, brown curling hair, and cheeks that seemed painted with carmine; but it was health's genuine bloom, deepened by the joy of life. He was by nature a great ladies' man, and like most deep adorers of the sex, never tied up his freedom of general worship by making one willful sacrifice of himself at the altar.

Adding to his fortune by a large and princely business, something like that of the great Florentine trader, Cosmo the Magnificent, he was enabled to entertain on a grand scale. For a long time his dinners, suppers and balls, were not to be surpassed by any given in the party-giving city of New York. His uncommon cheeriness ; the splendor of his dress ; his sparkling wit ; radiant chandeliers ; infinite fund of small-talk; French furniture; glowing welcomes to his guests; his bounteous heart and board ; his noble graces and his glorious wine ; what wonder if all these drew crowds to Jimmy's hospitable abode? In the winter assemblies he figured first on the manager's list. James Rose, Esq., too, was the man to be found foremost in all presentations of plate to highly successful actors at the Park, or of swords and guns to highly successful generals in the field. Often, also, was he chosen to present the gift on account of his fine gift of finely saying fine things.

"Sir," said he, in a great drawing-room in Broadway, as he extended toward General G— a brace of pistols set with turquoise, "Sir." said Jimmy with a Castilian flourish and a rosy smile, "there would have been more turquoise here set, had the names of your glorious victories left room."

Ah, Jimmy, Jimmy! Thou didst excel in compliments. But it was in-wrought with thy inmost texture to be affluent in all things which give pleasure. And who shall reproach thee with borrowed wit on this occasion, though borrowed indeed it was? Plagiarize otherwise as they may, not often are the men of this world plagiarists in praise.

But times changed. Time, true plagiarist of the seasons.

Sudden and terrible reverses in business were made mortal by mad prodigality on all hands. When his affairs came to be scrutinized, it was found that Jimmy could not pay more than fifteen shillings in the pound. And yet in time the deficiency might have been made up—of course, leaving Jimmy penniless—had it not been that in one winter gale two vessels of his from China perished off Sandy Hook; perished at the threshold of their port.

Jimmy was a ruined man.

It was years ago. At that period I resided in the country, but happened to be in the city on one of my annual visits. It was but four or five days since seeing Jimmy at his house the centre of all eyes, and hearing him at the close of the entertainment toasted by a brocaded lady, in these well-remembered words: "Our noble host ; the bloom on his cheek, may it last long as the bloom in his heart!" And they, the sweet ladies and gentlemen there, they drank that toast so gayly and frankly off; and Jimmy, such a kind, proud, grateful tear stood in his honest eye, angelically glancing round at the sparkling faces, and equally sparkling, and equally feeling, decanters.

Ah! poor, poor Jimmy—God guard us all—poor Jimmy Rose !

Well, it was but four or five days after this that I heard a clap of thunder no, a clap of bad news. I was crossing the Bowling Green in a snow-storm not far from Jimmy's house on the Battery, when I saw a gentleman come sauntering along, whom I remembered at Jimmy's table as having been the first to spring to his feet in eager response to the lady's toast. Not more brimming the wine in his lifted glass than the moisture in his eye on that happy occasion....

YES. The good old sound that's been missing from their last few albums! I love it

Did you not hear Pale Horses? That album had some pretty heavy songs on it. And Ten Stories had Fox's Dream which was pretty old school mwY as well

Thanks RFC for always give us good bands

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