1948-2023 . Retired Statistician, Poet, author, historian and campaigner. Co-founder of International Society for Bayesian Analysis and of the Edinburgh All Comers Writers Club and Participant in the 2019 UCL Eugenics Inquiry.
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Thursday 11 June 2015
THE GODDESS FORTUNA (Poem)
THE GODDESS FORTUNA
Thomas Hoskyns Leonard
Goddess of chance, luck, and fate,
The Greek Tyche's soulmate
And the Egyptian Isis's intimate
Governed the circle of life on the Wheel of Fortune,
And took pleasure to importune,
Sometimes veiled and blind;
To Gaius and Lucius most unkind.
Full of life's capriciousness
Though could emulate Father Jupiter's bountifulness
Long before Pascal and De Fermat devised probability
To describe her lack of inscrutability
Servius Tullius built an Etruscan temple,
On the Tiber, her virtues there to sample;
At Forum Boarium she with Mater Matuta entwined,
And a cult was born, so refined;
On Midsummer's Day Romans made hay
And floated downstream while celebrating on the way;
Garlanded at the two temples, intoxicated they became
And rowed back inebriated to their everlasting fame,
Great Constantine the Goddess of Fortune's favours acquired,
But as Christ Jesus wished to be admired;
So as Constantinople rose they to Fortuna sang
While chanting the Kyrie as the bells merrily rang;
A pagan and Christian emperor bewitched was he,
And he utterly deserved his civil disharmony;
Poor Crispus chanced it, and Fausta in a steam-bath met her fate
'That wasn't just bad luck,' he thought, but much too late.
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
Bill Shakespeare all alone bewept his outcast state
And troubled deaf Heaven with his bootless cries
And looked upon himself and cursed his fate
If he hadn't chanced his luck, his pox wouldn't have killed his mate.
Luck, chance, and fate bemuse philosophers to this day
Maybe everything's predestined, but have it your way.
Our fortune is their misfortune,
As Isis rolls the die,
And secretive eugenics takes them like a fly;
Maybe we are all controlled by strange powers rippling from above;
Maybe the ruthless Gatekeepers are void of human love,
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