ON, DANTE...
Who would want a
Friend like Dante?
Mr. Alighieri
Was downright scary:
Who else would describe Old Lucifer vomiting
And call the gruesome scene "Divine Comedy?"
Who else would let us join his travel club
Through the realms of Beelzebub,
Through the spirit quarry
Of Purgatory,
As a purebred treatise
For poor dead Beatrice?
Who else would spend his days
Dreaming of ways
To follow one of the ladies
Through Hades...
And, even worse,
Composing verse
So well
About the nether regions of Hell?
THE FRENCH FOREIGN LESION
In one of the darkest pages
From the darkened Middle Ages,
Peoples European and even Teutonic
Found themselves roughly Bubonic
Just because some rats
Had infested their bowls and vats.
To be less vague,
It was the Black Plague.
JOAN IS WELL DONE!
Joan of Arc
Was in the dark
When it came to boys
And dating.
But a heavenly voice
And Anglo-baiting
And wars
Were in her repertoires.
Despite her young years
And despite her gender,
Her male warrior peers
Were very tender
(But not to the point of sharin'
A dance)
With this pure-grade heroine
Of France.
Even in the face of capture,
She retained her pious rapture:
She would not deny the voice inside
Just to keep from getting fried.
Death? She did not fear it!
She hardly made a stir
When consumed, as it were,
By the spirit.