She Got Very High

“I knew it was over. And I saw my family. I saw my funeral, and I was in the coffin …
and they were saying, ‘She was just a prostitute.’”

Feeling unloved by her father and used by a boyfriend, Annie Lobert yearned inside for the power to exact revenge over men. It overrode any caution in her life and within a short time she was selling her body, gaining the money she thought was her answer to a better life.

It was a lie. The money instead went to her violent pimp and for many years her world descended into a hell filled with prostitution, cancer, drug addiction and no future. Yet when she cried out to God in her darkest and most dangerous moment, hope arrived to give her a second chance.

Annie Lobert

 

Powdered Beaux and Boobies

Enough, the Bible is by wits arraign’d,
Genteel men doubt it, smart men say it’s feign’d,
Onward my powder’d beaux and boobies throng,
As puppies float the kennel’s stream along.
But their defects to varnish, and, in spite
Of pride and dignity, resolv’d to write,
I seiz’d the work myself. Straight, in a cloud
Of night involv’d, to Scotia’s realms I rode.
There, in the cobwebs of a college room,
I found my best Amanuensis, Hume,
And bosom’d in his breast. On dreams afloat,
The youth soar’d high, and, as I prompted, wrote.
Sublimest nonsense there I taught mankind,
Pure, genuine dross, from gold seven times refin’d.
From realm to realm the strains exalted rung,
And thus the sage, and thus his teacher, sung.
All things roll on, by fix’d eternal laws;
Yet no effect depends upon a cause:
Hence every law was made by Chance divine,
Parent most fit of order, and design!
Earth was not made, but happen’d: Yet, on earth,
All beings happen, by most stated birth;
Each thing miraculous; yet strange to tell,
Not God himself can shew a miracle.
Mean time, lest these great things, the vulgar mind,
With learning vast, and deep research, should blind,
Lest dull to read, and duller still when known,
My favorite scheme should mould, and sleep, alone;

Timothy Dwight: The Triumph of Infidelity (1788)

Fops to Folly, Rakes to Sin


In Vain my Methodist, brave Herbert, cried,
And whin’d, and wrote, pretended, pray’d, and lied,
In vain my Shaftsbury, to his master true,
Dread Humble bee! o’er burrs and thistles flew;
Incupped, and ravished with the fussful noise,
To praise the wondrous flowers, he rais’d his voice,
Of nature, beauty, dream’d and humm’d amain,
And sung himself, and buzz’d at truth, in vain.
Ah Bolingbroke, how well thy tatter’d robe,
Poor, Bedlam king of learning’s little globe!
Amus’d thy fancy? He, with glory fir’d,
Myself in miniature! to heaven aspir’d
For fame, his heaven, thro’ falshood’s realms he ran,
And wish’d, and watch’d, and toil’d, and hop’d, in vain,
Misread, miswrote, misquoted, misapplied,
Yet fail’d of fame, and miss’d the skies, beside.
In views, in pride, in fate, conjoin’d with me,
Even Satan’s self shall drop a tear for thee.
My leaders these; yet Satan boasts his subs,
His Tolands, Tindals, Collinses, and Chubbs,
Morgans and Woolstons, names of lighter worth,
That stand, on falshood’s list, for &c.
That sworn to me, to vice and folly given,
At truth and virtue growl’d, and bark’d at heaven.
Not men, ’tis true, yet manlings oft they won,
Against their God help’d blockheads oft to fun,
Help’d fops to folly, and help’d rakes to sin,
And marr’d all sway, by mocking sway divine.
My list of authors too they help’d to count,
As cyphers eke the decimal amount.
As writers too they profer’d useful aid
Believ’d unseen, and reverenc’d though unread.
Against their foe no proof my sons desire,
No reasoning canvass and no sense require.

Timothy Dwight: The Triumph of Infidelity (1788)