A Poem for the Falling BBB

[Artaxerxes/SweetIrony]

How Did You Die?
--Edmund Vance Cook

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there -- that’s disgrace.
The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;
It’s how did you fight and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could;
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?

[Padre Romero]

And another:


They that have climbed the white mists of the morning,
They that have soared, before the world's awake,
To herald up their foemen to them, scorning
The thin dawn's rest their weary folk might take.

Some that have left other mouths to tell the story
Of high blue battle — quite young limbs that bled;
How they had thundered up the clouds to glory,
Or fallen to an English field stained red.

Because my faltering feet would fail I find them
Laughing beside me, steadying the hand
That seeks their deadly courage — yet behind them
The cold light dies in that once brilliant land...

Do these, who help the quickened pulse run slowly,
Whose stern remembered image cools the brow —
Till the far dawn of Victory know only
Night's darkness, and Valhalla's silence now?

John Gilespie Magee

[HannibalAtTheGates]

I don't know any poems, but I do know a great movie: "A Bridge Too Far." It portrays Operation: Market Garden, a bold Allied operation to bring World War II to a quick end. It also has a ton of great actors too. A definite must see for every Bastard.

[Sir Fred of Etruria]

A haiku to express my emotions...

the zombie homeland
I called it my home, untill
friday the thirteenth

oh, and Hannibal... that is an awesome movie.