Melancholia

Summer drains steadily away, and I have taken to my cave. They say the hollows boom. (It is I, my pacing.) Let the hollows boom! Let those above-ground know-nothings speculate and blink. Let them feel uneasy at the thought of the dark heart under their feet. It is the diet of melancholy I feast on: peacocks and pigeons and all fenny fowl as ducks, geese, swans, herns, cranes, coots, didappers, waterhens, with teals, curs, sheldrakes, and peckled fowls. Burton says, "Though these be fair in feathers, pleasant in taste, and have a good outside (like hypocrites), white in plumes, their flesh is hard, black, unwholeseome, dangerous, melancholy meat." All the better for Halibut. Bring on the Hypocrites, and I will slit open their unwholesome bellies.