Poetry Sunday

Today is Sunday, October 31st ... Halloween! It's the day when the dead walk, the vampires feast, the mummies stalk their unsuspecting victims, and the werewolves howl in the night. It's also the day the witches brew up their potions, as they did in this classic scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth ...

The Song of the Witches

(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I)

by William Shakespeare

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Not a recipe you'd expect from Gordon Ramsay or The Barefoot Contessa, but suitable for the right dinner guests. Have a good day, treat the trick-or-treaters generously, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo