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Poems by John Pilkey
                               William Holman Hunt. The Hireling Shepherd (1852)


Of all the shocks imagination faces,
there's none quite like a cuckold's haplessness
in facing goat-like, clever gloriousness
that his supplanter loads in secret spaces.
When he is dead, the two are only graces,
remarrying as lawfully with tresses
still hanging down as newlywed confesses
that joys unspeakable fulfil their hidden places.
Prince Hamlet knows this horror as a son
in conscience and imagination stricken;
and as he feels his blighted stomach sicken
and damns the name of fantasy and fun,
he prays that dire vengeance somehow quicken
Hyperion, the Titan of the Sun.



                                                       John Davis Pilkey

Hamlet's Prayer