Birds have no consciousness of doom:
Yon thrush that serenades me daily
From scented snow of hawthorn bloom
Would not trill out his glee so gaily,
Could he foretell his songful breath
Would sadly soon be stilled in death.

Yon lambs that frolic on the lea
And incarnate the joy of life,
Would scarce disport them could they see
The shadow of the butcher's knife:
Oh Nature, with your loving ruth,
You spare them knowledge of Dark Truth.

To sad humanity alone,
(Creation's triumph ultimate)
The grimness of the grave is known,
The dusty destiny await . . . .
Oh bird and beast, with joy, elance
Effulgently your ingorance!
Oh man, previsioning the hearse,
With fortitude accept your curse!

The Definition of Love

My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its Tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant Poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the World should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the Mind,
And opposition of the Stars.
--Andrew Marvell

It used to be there, but now it's dead.

(Maybe I missed the spirit of the contest here... But when I read that description i wanted to draw something like this.)

Medieval princess

Still a lot of work to do I think, but it's coming along. Perhaps a bit too obvious for the theme? Haha. Goddamn suit was hard to do without refs. EDIT: Hahaha, oh jeeze, sorry Miss DJ. I totally didn't even see your piece. Totally aping the space idea. D: