"seasons don't fear the reaper / nor do the wind the sun or the rain / we can be like they are"

The start of Part I, Canto 1, Section ii of Owen Meredith's best-selling 1860 verse-novel Lucile:

Now in May Fair, of course,--in the fair month of May--
When life is abundant, and busy, and gay:
When the markets of London are noisy about
Young ladies, and strawberries,--"only just out;"
Fresh strawberries sold under all the house-eaves,
And young ladies on sale for the strawberry-leaves: ...

and so on -- I'll be merciful and stop here. Even more merciful, that is: the actual opening is worse, though not for the same reasons. The brave can read it here.

The joker in this pack being that "Owen Meredith" is better known as Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton, son of the more famous Bulwer-Lytton of the contest. Yes, dear readers, in addition to being an even more disasterous imperialist politician than his father, he was an even worse (but just as best-selling) poet.

Clearly, I need to read this. And, indeed, I now own a copy (one of this publisher's editions) -- 379 12mo. pages (gilt edged) of anapestic tetrameter couplets, in twelve cantos.

My question to you -- any interest in my live-blogging reading it? By way of forcing me to actually ride all the way through (as judging by the extract in The Stuffed Owl, describing the financial implications of a bank failure, the terrain is heavy going in stretches). Or would you prefer to receive a final report of the damage?

---L.