We’ve asked you here to join us
All together we sit around the fire
Singing songs about birds; for Jesus
and his glory. I hope you brought a fox
for the hunt’s tomorrow, and all know
how well our lord loves the chase.
Our friend, huntsman Chase:
“Gentleman, so glad the whole us
and them thing hasn’t, well you know,
kettle boiling over, dampened the fire,
as it were, (har har), but come morning don’t be foxed
lads, lest we spurn dear baby Jesus.
“Brothers, let us pray: Oh Jesus,
St Hubert and all the Sts, as we chase
the dawn I beseech you send nay the fox,
child, but she begotten us
from damnation and hellfire,
she so well we have all known;
(winknod, a certain’s virtue) Ahem, “Know
that we shall not wilt under; like Jesus
carrying our cross: her fire.
The shame that is our nature: the chase,
let it though Lord, only die with the last of us.
Amen.” “The sacrificial fox,
if you will.” [Pan cut to the fox
led by the hand, undressed] “Know
that gathered here we have with us,
resplendent in [quick cut to commotion] “Jesus
H. …” reverse Weird Science, the chase
delayed, the quarry absconded, the hall on fire.
“There! At attention, take aim, fire!”
“Alpha hold, delta roundabout, fox
trot out the front and give,” “Chase!?”
“Yes sir?, well sir, I know sir I know,”
“Hmm, I suppose he’s savvy then?” “What Jesus,
sir?”, “Hmm” “Rather, sir” “Well?” “It stays, sir, between us.”
Relive the chase of aught seven like it’s still on fire
Catch all the drama with us, right here on Fox
where: “We know fair better than Jesus”
–
tjq
One of the most difficult and complex of the various French forms, the sestina is a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. It makes no use of the refrain. This form is usually unrhymed, the effect of rhyme being taken over by a fixed pattern of end-words which demands that these end-words in each stanza be the same, though arranged in a different sequence each time.If we take 1-2-3-5-6 to represent the end-words of the first stanza, then the first line of the second stanza must end with 6 (the last end-word used in the preceding stanza), the second with 1, the third with 5, the fourth with 2, the fifth with 4, the sixth with 3–and so to the next stanza. The order of the first three stanzas, for instance, would be: 1-2-3-4-5-6; 6-1-5-2-4-3; 3-6-4-1-2-5. The conclusion, or envoy, of three lines must use as end-words 5-3-1, these being the final end-words, in the same sequence, of the sixth stanza. But the poet must exercise even greater ingenuity than all this, since buried in each line of the envoy must appear the other three end-words, 2-6.
Thus so highly artificial a pattern affords a form which, for most poets, can never prove anything more than a poetic exercise. Yet it has been practiced with success in English by Swinburne, Kipling, and Auden.
(from www.writing.upenn.edu)
