RKS British Literature: Who is Friar Tuck (Henry Gilbert)

‘Father Tuck is no hermit; he liveth not a wicked life as other false hermits do. He ever comes and solaces the poor in our village, and any good he can do if one is sick, that he doth for no payment. He is great of limb, and can fight well with the bow, the staff, or the sword, but he is no robber. He is humble and kind in heart, but he can be fierce as a lion to any that would do ill to a poor man or woman. Evil wandering knights have sometimes striven to thrust him from his hold, but with the aid of his great ban-dogs and his own strong arms he hath prevailed that neither knight nor other lord of robber hath made him yield.’

Henry Gilbert, “Robin Hood”, 1912

RKS British Literature: Robin Cleans Up the Marauding Band of Outlaws (Henry Gilbert)

Robin had had a very short way with these marauding bands of robbers, who made no distinction between rich and poor, but would soon rob a poor serf of his last piece of salted pork or bag of meal as a rich priest of his purse of gold. Whenever Robin learned of the hiding place of a band such as these, he would go there secretly with his men and surprise them before they could lay hand to weapon. Then, while everyone was covered by a yard long arrow he would say;

‘I am Robin Hood, whom ye know, and I give ye this choice. Cease your evil pilfering’s, wherein ye respect neither the poor nor the needy, and join my band and take our oath or fight with me to the death and put the choice to the ordeal by combat.’

Henry Gilbert, “Robin Hood”, 1912

Circe and the Cyclops: The Cyclops Attacks Odysseus’ Men in His Cave (Homer)

Not a word in reply to that, the ruthless brute.

Lurching up. He lunged with his hands towards my men

and snatching two at once, rapping them up on the ground

he knocked them dead like pups –

their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor –

and ripping them limb to limb to fix his meal

he bolted them down like a mountain lion, left no scrap,

devoured entrails, flesh, bones, marrow and all!

We flung our arms to Zeus, we wept and cried aloud,

looking on at his grisly work – paralyzed and appalled.

But once the Cyclops had stuffed his enormous gut

With human flesh, washing it down with raw milk,

He slept in his cave, stretched out along with his flocks.

Homer: Circe and the Cyclops

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”THE MEDIA HAS FAILED US” (COVID MEMORIES)

THE MEDIA HAS FAILED US (COVID MEMORIES)

Like a hound dog

They sniff out “reality”

Fed to them

By the politico-medico elite

Snapping to attention at their every word

Run and run for those vaccination jabs

Saviour of humanity

Or

Mindless blobs

Anti-vaxxers ignored

Or contrarian views

Never much time

To contest

Given that your advertising revenue depends on Big Pharma

Lowlife deceivers

“may cause fainting, dizziness, lung cancer and embolisms”

CNN and most others funded by Big Pharma meaning

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you

Oxi, fentanyl

Until it is time to run for cover

Safer to praise “the front-line heroes”  never paid decent wages

But save that story for another “special”

Are you really on our side

Or the preference to guard the sources of your adverting revenue

I often wonder about your integrity akin to cow manure

Robert K. Stephen

Circe and the Cyclops: The Land of the High and Mighty Cyclops (Homer)

From there we sailed on, our spirits at low ebb,

And reached the land of the high and mighty Cyclops,

lawless brutes, who trust so to the everlasting gods

they never plant with their own hands or plow the soil.

Unsown, unplowed, the earth teems with all they need,

wheat, barley and vines swelled by the rains of Zeus

to yield a big full-bodied wine from clustered grapes.

They have no meeting place for council, no laws either.

no, up on the mountain peaks they live in arching caverns –

each a law to himself, ruling his wives and children,

not a care in the world for any neighbor.

Homer: “Circe and the Cyclops”

RKS British Literature: Little John Joins Robin and His Merry Men (Henry Gilbert)

‘Hark ye, seven footer,’ said Robin. ‘We are outlaws, brave lads who have run from evil lords. There are twenty-two of us. If thou wilt join us, thou shalt share and share with us, both in hard knocks, good cheer, and the best we can reive from the rich snuffling priests, proud prelates, evil lords and hard hearted merchants who venture through the greenwood.

Henry Gilbert, “Robin Hood”, 1912

Circe and the Cyclops: In the Land of the Lotus-Eaters (Homer)

I was borne along by rough deadly winds

On the fish infested sea. Then on the tenth

Our squadron reached the land of the Lotus-eaters,

People who eat the lotus, mellow fruit and flower.

We disembarked on the coast, drew water there

And crewman snatched a meal by the swift ships.

Once we had our fill of food and drink I sent

A detail ahead, two picked men and a third, a runner,

To scout out who might live there-men like us perhaps,

Who live on bread? So off they went and soon enough they mingled among the natives, Lotus-eaters

Lotus-eaters

Who had no notion of killing my companions, not at all

They simply gave them the lotus to taste instead…

Any crewman who ate the lotus, the honey sweet fruit, lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,

Their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters

Grazing on lotus, all memory of their journey home dissolved forever…

Homer: Circe and the Cyclops

RKS French Literature: Louis XI and His Manipulative Physician (Victor Hugo)

While feeling the king’s pulse Coictier assumed a look of greater and greater alarm. Louis XI watched him some anxiety. Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The king’s bad health was the worthy man’s only farm. He made the most of it.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”

RKS British Literature: Who Shall Robin Hood and His Merry Men Beat, Bind and Set Free? (Henry Gilbert)

First, I will have you hurt no woman, nor any company in which a woman is found. I remember the sweet Virgin, and will ever pray for her favour and protection, and I will, therefore, that you shield all women. Look to it, also, that ye do not any harm to any honest peasant who tilleth his soil in peace, nor to any good yeoman wherever you meet them. Knights, also, and squires who are not proud, but who are good fellows, you shall treat with all kindness. But I tell thee this and bear it well in mind – abbots and bishops, priors and canons, and monks – ye may do all your will upon them. When ye rob them of their gold or their rich stuffs, ye are only taking only that which they have squeezed and reived from the poor. Therefore, take your fill of their wealth and spare not your staves on their backs. They speak the teaching of the blessed Jesus with their mouths. But their fat bodies and their black hearts deny Him every hour.

Henry Gilbert, “Robin Hood”, 1912

RKS French Literature: The Hellish Passion of the Archdeacon for Esmeralda (Victor Hugo)

And, as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived how large a space Nature had prepared there for the passions, he sneered more bitterly still. He stirred up in the depths of his heart all his hatred, all his malevolence, and he discovered with the cool eye of physician examining a patient, that this hatred, this malevolence, were but vitiated love, the source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted as he was, by making himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, in contemplating the worst side of his fatal passion, of that corroding, venomous, malignant, implacable love, which had driven one of them to the gibbet, the other to hell-fire, for her to condemnation, him to damnation.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”