« HTML Font faces and a poem »

Faerie Godmother

Faerie Godmother appears to me,
offering wishes - one, two, three.
"Choose your words and choose then well,
You can't play around with a magic spell."

So I think of the world and all its vice,
then turn all the weapons into rice.
Lost is that knowledge forever and a day,
now for man's foolishness shall he pay.

Gone is the science of mankind,
replaced by the magic of the mind.
No more the mortal races rule the day,
for creatures of fantasy have returned to stay.

Now I create a world of light,
yet darkness remains to continue the fight.
Here wizards walk and demons stalk,
in a land where the trees can talk.

Observing the Chaos all around,
she begs me wish for Hallowed ground.
Laughing evilly I say to her,
"Replace my wishes - if you care..."

So three is one and an easy choice,
"To no other may you wishes voice."
I alone remain in power,
casting spells from an obsidian tower.

Immortal now, I remain forever,
teaching the races to be clever.
Observing the world from within my room,
I pray for release from this doom...

© Copyright Paul Ackerley 1985.

First published in Mensa's "What If? SIG" in response to the question:

"What if you could have the traditional three wishes?"

Incidentally, depending the fonts you have installed, this page will look different on every system.
I've used, in order:

<font face="arnold bocklin, arnie, benguiat bk BT, tolkien, comic sans ms, celticmd, balloon, arial, serif" size="+2">

Now isn't that better that hogging bandwidth :-)

Several years later...

Now you'd use an eternal sytle sheet (css2) with a line like the one below :

.poem {
font: bold 10pt Fantasy, 'benguiat bk BT', Cursive, Serif, 'Times New Roman', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
}