Baba Brinkman - Dead Poets lyrics

A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me That with music loud and long I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise. I'm livin' every day with the dead poets' society Rioting inside my head, so it requires me To keep every word I've read close beside me Inspiring me to never go quietly I'm posturing like I'm the offspring of Oscar Wilde The foster child of Geoffrey Chaucer; now Hip-hop's the trial I face here, so I adopt the style But I've got to make clear that since my eighth year I've been possessed by Shakespeare and William Blake's spirits And still I wait to hear a voice like T.S. Elliot's And Percy Shelley is the first to tell me just How to speak out of turn and keep my verse rebellious I read Keats and learn from a grecian urn How to reach eternity through the gyre where Yeats purns So I can meet Traherne, plus I'm a freak like Burns With his twenty-some children, though I'm still a young pilgrim And I'm buildin' a temple from the sk**s my tongue's yieldin' So I feel like John Milton; paradise is lost For the thrill; I'm John Skelton crossed with Wordsworth And my zeal is unwelcome in George Herbert's church I'm livin' every day with the dead poets' society Rioting inside my head, so it requires me To keep every word I've read close beside me Inspiring me to never go quietly For a challenge I'm known to approach talent shows with Poems that I stole from Edgar Allen Poe's lips Opium hits dope Alexander Pope's wits I was Samuel Coleridge in a trance when I wrote this And I awoke with the whole song done I felt the soul of John Donne; Andrew Marvel Taught me to chase the sun; I can't make it stand still So instead I'll make it run, with puns denser Than Edmund Spencer's, and modern lyrics Modeled on Robert Herrick's; when I dispense words It's like a forge is firin', and I'm strikin' the iron Inspired by Lord Byron when I'm writin' the Siren Song; evidence of desire went wrong And lost innocence; my memory's gone In a sense, Tennyson has been reborn In a form with the fingerprints of Henry Vaughn I'm livin' every day with the dead poets' society Rioting inside my head, so it requires me To keep every word I've read close beside me Inspiring me to never go quietly As a poet I'm conscious of the goals I accomplish That I owe to accomplices, and when I'm feelin' honest My conscience bids me to admit to stealin' sonnet Styles from Philip Sydney; I'm fulfillin' a promise I gave Dylon Thomas to rage against the dyin' Of light; I'm like Adonis: I'm still a novice But I already got the sk**s to thrill a Goddess Or start a riot in the heart; that's why it's pounding I'm Thomas Wyatt's foundling; on Ezra Pound's wings I fly, quietly grounding my weight on the past's crutches I'm Robert Browning, and this rap is "My Last Dutchess" I'm puttin' the last touches on the way it's sounding In strange surroundings my grasp clutches For balance; I spin words, recalling how fast structures Fell and splintered at my feet like Alan Ginsberg That's how I'm ensured power of speech, and now I've been heard I'm livin' every day with the dead poets' society Rioting inside my head, so it requires me To keep every word I've read close beside me Inspiring me to never go quietly Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments... d**h, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so... In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes On what wings dare he aspire What the hand dare seize the fire... As holy and enchanted As 'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover... Who'd stoop to blame this sort of trifling Even had you sk** in speech, which I have not... Well those pa**ions read, which yet survive Stamped on these lifeless things... To whom thou sayest "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, that is all ye know on earth And all ye need to know" Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run