In my mind, it is complete, and is one of the Yes I Am Old But I Saw Vince Gill On Stage Signature Shirt poems. Every reviewer, save one, thinks it has no meaning whatsoever. Quoting from the best analysis of this poem from the late John Spencer Hill, “The first and, for over a hundred years, almost the only reader to insist on the intelligibility and coherence of Kubla Khan was Shelley’s novel-writing friend, Thomas Love Peacock: “there are”, he declared in 1818, “very few specimens of lyrical poetry so plain, so consistent, so completely simplex et unum from first to last”. Perhaps wisely, Peacock concluded his fragmentary essay with these words, thereby sparing himself the onerous task of explaining the consistency and meaning of so plain a poem as Kubla Khan.” (John Spencer Hill, A Coleridge Companion).
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I like to get this major sh**fight out of the way before I have to focus on other things, like making sure I’ve bought (and wrapped, in secret while everyone’s asleep) all the ATTACK OF THE MUTANT GOOSEBUMPS SHIRT , then preparing for the feast, making all arrangements, buying food while battling snarling sweat-demons at the supermarket. It will be even more fun this year, with “social-distancing” at peak-pre-Christmastime. Wonder what that’s gonna look like? Our family have always had a slight (very slight) advantage of having Christmas one day earlier than most Australians. However, if we’re doing it this year, we’re staggering it. Maybe it’s time more people did. Our Christmas will be about a week early. This avoids the mass-hysteria grocery shopping, it will be one week less hot (temps go crazy on Christmas Day), and we can relax after, while everyone else is still stressed and suffering. I’ve talked my family into it. In previous years, there was some resistance, as it wasn’t “real Christmas time”. But “Christmastime” is just an idea in our heads, and no day is really any different to another. Christ wasn’t even born on December 25. And he’s not complaining that people changed his day to a time that was more convenient, so why should anyone complain about a re-change? Anyway, sorry, my main answer is “Yes, we can absolutely put up our dex early, because Christmas preps are such a nightmare, that I want to get a full two months mileage out of them before I have to take them down again in the new year.”
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