Regular readers of the PW²L blog will have noted
its editor's ongoing insistence upon strict meters being
maintained in the verses of Ulysses Poe. Such insistence
acknowledges as intentional the stress on the second
syllable of the final word in each of the three verses below
and, as such, its being a departure from the poet's earlier
practice of stress placement, instead, on the first syllable
of that final word. It's and example of the accentual
difference between 'cattle' and 'cartel.'
When I deal my own drugs, dodging syndicate thugs,
people say, "You're all khat, no cartel."
Were it mine to decide who'd become Clunes's bride,
in I'd weigh: "Always Catz, no Cadell."*
* In ten seasons of ITV's "Doc Martin," one might have
from time to time wondered which actress -- Caroline Catz
as Louisa Glasson or Selena Cadell as Sally Tishell -- would
wind up with Martin Clunes's Doctor Martin Ellingham...?
Although scops from the Indies with indigo bindis
say "Nay!," they're all Bhat, no Patel.
I, re winos and wine, "Cattle/Hat"-wise opine:
"They're no Tait-(tinger), all muscatel."
Since, of stuff cetyl's in, most is bad for your skin,
let's roar throaty: "All wax! And no cetyl!"
Does Mambrino's gold helm* make a knight of the realm
of Quixote -- all hat and no kettle...?
* The Golden Helmet of Mambrino is, in fact, perhaps
less a kettle than a barber's shaving basin, but...what
the hey!
