JONES VERY

You met Thoreau
and Emerson as a poet
in a transcendental glow
from a mystical time
and chose rhyme
to musically sing
for a bardic Muse
in a Pierrian Spring,
when you composed
Shakespearian sonnets,
then you had
a mental breakdown
others call
your religious madness
as a scholar,
before you wore the collar
at Harvard Divinity
when diagnosed
as bi-polar,
claiming you were
the Second Coming,
loving women
yet reckoned that lust
has no righteous sensibility
you say your diary,
recalling your duty
from your motto:
"to sacrifice beauty,"
is in escro in your memo
until you bit the dust.