The L-Space Web: Filks

The Anthropomorphic Personification


Subject: Re: [I] Poe gets a computer
From: Leo Breebaart
Date: 1999/01/14
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett

Denise Connell writes:
> just feeling silly and wanted to share :-)
>
> SUPPOSE EDGAR ALLAN POE HAD USED A COMPUTER?
A long time ago, I once started a Discworld version of "The Raven", but ran out of inspiration too quickly for it to be really useful or funny. Perhaps some of the expert filkers out there would be interested in helping me finish this, or reincarnate it as something better?

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious newsgroup of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my monitor.
"'Tis some hacker," I muttered, "tapping at my monitor;
Only this, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately skeleton, of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my monitor.
Perched upon a Clarecraft figure, just above my monitor,
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ivory skull beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the holy anorankh it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven thou," I said, "art sure no raven,
Ghastly, grim, and ancient skeleton, wandering from the nightly shore.

Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore."
Quoth the skeleton, NEVERMORE.

[1] Edgar Allen Ogg : Discworld poet and author whose creations include short stories such as "The Octarine Bug" and "The Cask of Ankh-Morpork", but is perhaps most famous for his detective story in which the murderer turns out to be an Orang-Utan...

Note that I have tried to keep very close to the original on purpose -- I like the effect you get when the changes are subtle, and only a different word here and there is enough to suddenly put an entire different slant on things...

Leo Breebaart


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