The Thousand Nights and the One Night
(Dunyazad and her sister Shahrazad are my two favorite heroines of folk tales.)
(I loved the Arabian nights' characters... I read them first when I was fifteen, and come back to it/them often....)
Night comes, the sky horse - a picture by Osso.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
(You must have gotten the expurgated version, The Thousand Nights and the One Night almost begins with the Sultan of Baghdad's wife being serviced by black slaves with huge members, and makes sure sex rears its ugly head regularly thereafter. I have an abridged version, but the abridgement is only the shortening of some of the tales--original serialized stories--there is no censorship in this edition.)
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
She walks in beauty
Like the night of cloudless climes
And starry skies
And all that's best of dark and light
Meet in her aspect and in her eyes . . .
(I may have already used that in this thread)
If she be black, and thereto have a wit,
She'll find a wight that shall her blackness fit.
Oh Dear, what can I do?
Baby's in black, and I'm feeling blue . . .
Egos drone and pose alone,
Like black balloons, all banged and blown
On a backwards river
The infidels shiver in the stench of belief.
And tell my mama I'm a hundred years late;
I'm over the rails and out of the race
The crippled psalms of an age
that won't thaw're ringing in my ears
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
E. A. Poe, 1831
Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
(The Forsaken Merman, Matthew Arnold)
It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived, whom you may know
By the name of Annabelle Lee
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child
In this kingdom by the sea
But we loved with a love that was more than love
I and my Annabelle Lee
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies not plenty;
Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle . . .
CURLY Locks! Curly Locks! wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash the dishes, nor yet feed the swine,
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream.
<personally I'd far rather feed swine than sew a fine seam>
I'll take the strawberries, sugar and cream, though . . .
In Watermelon Ice
Ham.
My soul.
I took a big hot roll,
I put in some jam,
And butter that melted down in with the jam,
Which was blackberry jam,
And a big old folded-over oozy slice of HAM . . .
And my head swam.
Ham!
Hit 'me with a hammah,
Wham bam bam!
What good ammah
Without mah ham?
Roy Blount, Jr.
)
.. do most American versions have the full tales?