DANIEL BOONE, EPIC HERO.

Dr. Boli has on more than one occasion pointed his readers toward bad poetry. He would like to make amends now by giving you an epic poem based on the life of Daniel Boone—and one published while the late Mr. Boone was still alive. It takes a completist view of its subject, as you may see from the argument to Book I:

Immediately subsequent to the transformation of Chaos into order, and previous to the creation of light, the Angels who superintend terrestrial affairs assume their stations…

As you might expect from a tale of Daniel Boone, the backwoods action never lets up—starting with the very first sentence, which we reproduce here:

When first their dark and yet untravel’d rounds
Through the inane expanse of pristine Night,
The planetary conglobations roll’d;
Before the great eternal’s sacred eye,
Upon the gloom of the sidereal orbs,
Their pure-beam’d, time-enduring splendors flash’d;
Ere on Attraction’s mystic centre pois’d
By the Almighty’s sun creating hand,
The blazing ball that lights our solar sphere,
From the ecliptic-zone his radiance pour’d;
When from their chrystal palaces in Heaven’s
Unmeasure’d heights of bright and cloudless day,
Th’Angelic Spirits view’d Creation’s God,
Along th’unresisting void of space,*
In numberless succession, rolling worlds;
From their celestial ranks they bade descend,
To rule the vast machinery of the globes,
Supernal hosts with holy power endued.

*A mistake by the printer; the rhythm requires “the unresisting,” not “th’unresisting.”

Yes, sir! Nothing whiles away the dullness of a long winter night in the Shenandoah Valley like a rip-roaring tale of adventure. Here is The Adventures of Daniel Boone, by Daniel Bryan.

Dr. Boli is now looking for an excuse—any excuse—to use the phrase “planetary conglobations” in a sentence.