PLUTONIC SONNETS (A Modern Shakespearean Sonnet Series), Sonnet 135: Percy’s Love Life

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From faith and family Irva feared to stray,
So that relationship did not quite burgeon;
Then he let charming Edith get away,
In part because she was not quite a virgin.
Miss Erna chased him not quite hard enough:
His amorous response, in his own phrase,
Was “incomplete.” (’Tis but of late there’s stuff
To help an aging man with that malaise.)
Meanwhile, his secretary made long strife
With Constance Keith for Percy (and their war
Continued after Constance was his wife,
And even after Percy was no more).
But Percy loved work more than love or sex;
And his next work was finding “Planet X”!

(Courtesy of PublishAmerica)

PLUTONIC SONNETS (A Modern Shakespearean Sonnet Sequence), Sonnet 134: Percy’s Style

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Now Percy was a man of grace and style,
Which for a scientist’s a little funny;
His shopping trips for clothes could last awhile,
And Percival, remember, had the money.
I guess he thought one might as well just try
To look as smart and tasteful as one can;
I think that Percy was too bright a guy
To really think it’s clothes that make the man—
Or woman, though here too he was no dunce.
Lace blouses he most fav’rably assessed:
“Nothing in which a woman is at once
So dressed and so bewitchingly undressed”!
So Percy had an eye for more than Mars,
And Percy liked fine wine and good cigars.

(Courtesy of PublishAmerica)

PLUTONIC SONNETS (A Modern Shakespearean Sonnet Cycle), Sonnet 133: Percy’s Stellar Hoosiers

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Th’ observatory Percy Lowell “built”
Seemed like one of a rich man’s passing toys;
But Percy gave it an immortal tilt
By hiring two hardworking Hoosier boys.
So even experts who had come to cite
Poor Percy’s work on Mars as good for laughs
Could find but little fault, try as they might,
With C. O. Lampland’s stellar photographs.
And it was V. M. Slipher’s to reveal
(Regardless of what might be found on Mars)
That spiral galaxies are fast awheel,
And there is gas and dust between the stars.
And so, to some extent despite its founder,
The place’s scientific name grew sounder.

(Courtesy of PublishAmerica)