Taurus April 20 - May 20
"A Poison Tree." Plant a poison tree this week. They look quite nice and shiney, a lot nicer than those money trees, what with Jamesey Joyce's face or the queen Mum's all over them. Plus, it has that added advantage, as the poem goes, of getting your enemy to sneak in and eat the fruit of it. I think it does that by doing Dean Martin impersonations.

Leo July 23 - August 22
"To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, With the Plough." There is a very, very good reason why Robbie Burns is not known to this day as a great farmer.
Probably because his brother, Billy, far outshone him in tilling soil. And he talked funny.

Virgo August 23 - September 22
"Sonnet to Twilight." Seeing as how there aren't enough hours in the day, nighttime has to suffice. Try to cram breakfast, lunch, and supper into one meal, around 9 p.m. every evening, called something catchy like Flurble, and you'll find you have a lot more Time in the day.

Gemini May 21 - June 20
"Lines Written in Early Spring." It's a true story that Wordsworth was lying when he said, "I heard a thousand blended notes/While in a grove I sat reclined". True, he was in a grove, and he heard quite a few notes, but he happened to have been standing, frantically shoo-ing away a bee that had gotten inside his sleeve, and not reclining, as he might have had you believe.
If you're a celebrity, there's nothing wrong with being popular, though it's a serious moral offence to be popular and a bad actor.

Capricorn December 22 - January 19
"Lucy Ashton's Song." As the song goes, mind beauty's charming, and kings, and something else, too. Watch out, also, for spiders, as everyone may tell you they're a harmless enough thing, most are just waiting for you to believe that before striking.

Cancer June 21 - July 22
"A Now, Descriptive of a Hot Day." See what hot days do to people's brains? "Phoebus... holds sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams"? Put a pair of clippers in his hands and put him to work. On that note, spend the week looking busy, or you're bound to either get read some of this horribly unexciting account of a hot day, or be forced to do yard work.

Pisces February 19 - March 20
"Cumberland Rocks." Rocks could sometimes seem like the most excruciatingly dull things put upon this fine Earth of ours. Not the sort of things to set one's soul on fire, are they? Well, you'd be right, unless you were thinking of first striking flint, which is a rock, against another rock, which is also a rock, and trying to catch the sparks on your soul. Which hurts, and is not recommended, I'm told.

Aries March 21 - April 19
"When Shall I Tread Your Garden Path." Well, if you've cleared it of snakes and other assorted crawling things (which probably includes bugs, as well), then I shall tread your garden path, again. If you'll have me, of course, and if you're not serving those horribly soggy cucumber sandwiches again.

Libra September 23 - October 22
"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison." I'm still mildly disappointed in Coleridge. He goes off, writes about some opium-induced far off place, does another bit about a far-off incident with a seagull, something about France, spots in the sun, and then goes and gets stuck in a lime tree in his back yard. That's the kind of thing that will stick with you forever, too.

Scorpio October 23 - November 21
Out of pity, and probably some sort of weakness of spirit on the horoscope writer's part, Scorpios are granted an honourary horoscope this week.
"Sonnet [When I have fears that I may cease to be]." Standing well clear of Keats' 'teeming brain' may not be the best solution, as, from afar, you'd then presumably have to view that teeming brain, and that just doesn't sound like a pleasant proposition.
People with teeming brains are not to be trusted. Foaming mouths usually aren't a good sign, either.

Sagittarius November 22 - December 21
"Ozymandias." This will teach you to travel, all you wind up doing is finding dusty statues and plaques in the desert.
Ozymandias may have been king of kings, and all that, but did he wield power over the horoscopes? Nope. He probably didn't.

Aquarius January 20 - February 18
"Ode to a Nightingale." Do you wake or sleep? The best way to tell is to pour water all over the closest possible sleeping person. If they wake up screaming and punch you a few times, you could be sleeping or waking, but at least you can blame having poured water on them on the test you were carrying out.
It might be good to have some sort of scientific-sounding reason for using pouring water on people as a test for being asleep or awake.

[Horoscopes. Sponsored this week by an old education. And a Voice of the Shuttle. Further explication of most of the allusions can be requested from our interns.]