Linux Songs Poems

'Tis the dream of each programmer,
Before his life is done,
To write three lines of APL,
And make the damn things run.

        To A Quick Young Fox
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp--
Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
                -- Lazy Dog

to be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best night and day
to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
any human being can fight and
never stop fighting.
                -- e.e. cummings

To code the impossible code,            This is my quest --
To bring up a virgin machine,           To debug that code,
To pop out of endless recursion,        No matter how hopeless,
To grok what appears on the screen,     No matter the load,
                                        To write those routines
To right the unrightable bug,           Without question or pause,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash,        To be willing to hack FORTRAN IV
To mount the unmountable magtape,       For a heavenly cause.
To stop the unstoppable crash!          And I know if I'll only be true
                                        To this glorious quest,
And the queue will be better for this,  That my code will run CUSPy and calm,
That one man, scorned and               When it's put to the test.
        destined to lose,
Still strove with his last allocation
To scrap the unscrappable kludge!
                -- To "The Impossible Dream", from Man of La Mancha

To err is human,
To purr feline.
                -- Robert Byrne

To err is human, to purr feline.
To err is human, two curs canine.
To err is human, to moo bovine.

To everything there is a season, a time for every pupose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.
                Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

To stand and be still,
At the Birkenhead drill,
Is a damned tough bullet to chew.
                -- Rudyard Kipling

To whom the mornings are like nights,
What must the midnights be!
                -- Emily Dickinson (on hacking?)

To write a sonnet you must ruthlessly
strip down your words to naked, willing flesh.
Then bind them to a metaphor or three,
and take by force a satisfying mesh.
Arrange them to your will, each foot in place.
You are the master here, and they the slaves.
Now whip them to maintain a constant pace
and rhythm as they stand in even staves.
A word that strikes no pleasure?  Cast it out!
What use are words that drive not to the heart?
A lazy phrase? Discard it, shrug off doubt,
and choose more docile words to take its part.
A well-trained sonnet lives to entertain,
by making love directly to the brain.