Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

All by 17th-century poet Basho:

***

The beginning of spring:
For the new year,
Five sho of rice from last year.

***

Putting on a silk garment that Ransetsu gave me
for the New Year
The first morning of spring.
I feel like
Someone else.

***

The autumn full moon:
All night long
I paced round the lake.

***

Winter seclusion:
Once again I will lean against
This post.

***

Resigned to death by exposure,
How the wind
Cuts through me!

***

O bush warblers!
Now you’ve shit all over
my rice cake on the porch

***

Eaten alive by
lice and fleas -- now the horse
beside my pillow pees

***

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams

***

A mountain pheasant cry
fills me with fond longing for
father and mother

***

New Year’s first snow -- ah --
just barely enough to tilt
the daffodil

***

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

So I was showing Desiree this website, an amazing collection of death masks for everyone from Oliver Cromwell to Noel Coward, and she observed that John Keats looks just like Thom Yorke. Judge for yourself:

( Who do you looky-likey? )

Cribbed from Wikipedia:

Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860–1939) was a novelist born in Drumaness, Co Down in Ireland. She published her first novel Irene Iddesleigh at her own expense in 1898. She wrote poetry and a number of novels, and despite not being read very widely her eccentric writing style was famed amongst critics and admirers as creating some of the worst prose and poetry ever written.

( If she were alive today, she'd just have her own web page crammed full of awful fanfic. )