Good evening, ladies and germs! The title of today's entry comes from "Sleep and Poetry" by John Keats, one of my favourite Romantic poets. I'm sorry to say that I do not currently have the time for a proper entry — it being the last, incredibly harrowing week before finals — but I figured I would share a sonnet I wrote last night (this morning, really: I finished at 5 a.m.). Please do tell me your thoughts, if you would be so kind as to drop me a comment. Until next we meet, I bid you farewell. Au revoir, tout le monde!

Absinthe tears cascade into the bitter pools of Woe—
Opalescent emerald depths: abyssal, limpid, fell—
Lined with sombre amaranths that shun the spiteful snow,
Watching with despondence as the world descends to hell.
Melancholy rules the night in laudanum livery,
Tyrant of the tortured heart that yearns for rueful love,
Reigning over academes in spires of ivory
Whose midnight erudition thieves their sleep so far above.
Cunning Mephistopheles demands a damnèd trade:
Inspiration comes in lieu of happiness in life;
Whispers from the melancholic muse do so pervade
That chaos reigns within the mind in ever-changing strife.
   'Tis blood, not ink, that tips the artist's piercing quill,
   And every sanguine word is anguish nonpareil.

[Exit Orpheum.]