dog

lashes like velvet brushes

I can feel your eyes

painting my face happy

by Whit Haydn

Pop Haydn is featured in a ten page cover article in the Society of American Magicians’ M.U.M. Magazine for April, 2021. The article is written by Jaq Greenspon. Lots of photos. The Magazine is available online to members, and by mail to members who want it.

Sonnet 151

Love is too young to know what conscience is,

Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,

Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove;

For, thou betraying me, I do betray

My nobler part to my gross body’s treason.

My soul doth tell my body that he may

Triumph in love—flesh stays no farther reason,

But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee

As his triumphant prize—proud of this pride,

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.

  No want of conscience hold it that I call

  Her “love” for whose dear love I rise and fall.

Sonnet 144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still;

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman colored ill.

To win me soon to hell, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, but not directly tell;

But being both from me both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

  Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth

Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false speaking tongue;

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not t’ have years told.

  Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

  And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.