The Purple Cloud Of Gentle Doom (Mementos of a Polytonic)

                     “...and beneath the flag, stretched right across the house,
                      was the thing which spelled, letter by letter, in letters of light:
                      and it spelled two words, deliberately, coming to the end,
                      and going back to recommence: Drink ROBORAL"* 
                                                                                                          
                                                                                                     M.P. Shiel

Canoes:

canoes

aloes

foes

archfoes

floes

felloes

does

hoes

joes

roes

sloes

hammertoes

tippytoes

snowshoes

gumshoes

horseshoes

overshoes

& shoes

but stilletoes emphatically stilletoes even as high-heeled blues.

Undergoes:

oboes

buboes

heroes

antiheroes

superheroes

tomatoes

potatoes

throes & woes

but undoes noes and yoes.

Foregoes no-go's so:

haloes

hoboes

zeroes

viragoes

gigoloes

mottoes

flamingoes

tornadoes

tuxedoes

tobaccoes

piccoloes

buckoes

(which looks too much like backhoes in them thar hills)

bravadoes

renegadoes

desperadoes

commandoes

filibusteroes

magnificoes &

manifestoes

Yet echoes with echoes or echos, vetoes vetoes and never banjos banjoes.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,

when was the Great Vowel Shift

& should there be a comma before the and?

E. A. Costa

E. A. Costa     October 24, 2016   Granada, Nicaragua

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N.B.: *Alise Bulfin, “'One Planet, One Inhabitant': Mass Extermination In M. P. Shiel's

Purple Cloud" suggests plausibly  Roboral—otherwise unknown apparently--was some 

“fraudulent tonic”. It might be pointed out that Shiel was a Socialist and the name is an

anagram of “laboro”, “I work” in Latin, which works either in regard to Shiels or to some

contemporary patent medicine peddler having the very name of the tonic avowing that it works.