“in some of her speculations she seems hardly to distinguish between the Deity and the Drains”

It’s been a while since I indulged you all with some very bad poetry—and it just so happens I just stumbled across a glorious example. You know you’re in for a ride when the poem starts:

Spirits of dawn, divinely manifest
Behind your blushing banners in the sky,
Daring invaders of Night's tenting-ground,—
How do ye strain on forward-bending foot,
Each to be first in heralding of joy!
With silence sandalled, so they weave their way,
And so they stand, with silence panoplied,
Chanting, through mystic symbollings of flame,
Their solemn invocation to the light.

Mechanically competent, but yeah not good. At all. This is from “Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain” by Alice Brown (1857-1948). She’s better known as a local-color New England novelist—the mountain in question is in Vermont, so the location at least is in her wheelhouse.

You can appreciate the full poem here. You’re welcome.

Subject quote from Florence Nightingale, from Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey.