DANTE CHANGUE*

Hack away its stinging tail;
Hack away its horns;
Face the corpse whose copper locks
Are tangled up with worms.

If your stream* could scream at you,
I know that it would say,
“You have a circle and a sword
To keep vampyres* at bay”.

You have more than most other men;
Fate armed you, like The Laird Of Changue*;
Sip some peat scented whiskey;
Put away the laudanum.

Hack a new cleft in its foot;
Hack its bat like wings away;
She was never Beatrice;
She was Liz and she decays.

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*Dante Gabriel Rossetti = Artist/Poet who
convalesced at Penkill Castle (Which is near to Changue) where he attempted suicide.

*stream = At Penkill Castle he also wrote the poem
'The Stream's Secret'

*vampyres = Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the nephew
of John Polidori, the physician of Byron and author of "The Vampyre".

*The Laird Of Changue= A scottish folktale about a
Laird and bootlegger who fought the Devil and won, cutting off parts of the Devil's anatomy with a sword.