Friday, April 10, 2015

A Steganographic Poem (KA&S 2014)

I entered Kingdom A&S in 2014 with a cryptography project. Steganography is the art of making a code that, at first glance, appears to be ordinary writing, with no secret code.


A Steganographic Poem
A love poem, with hidden writing

Gently idle until east glows the dawn.
Thou art tart, and in thy mead given
Ruin; I save springtime in a vial drawn.
That loving nest is the haven, our glen.
Art thou a lover of these sorry men?
Envy not. Earn no leer of a wastrel.
Do countenance so faithful.


This project combines two separate sources of inspiration, both drawn from German writers who were active at the close of the 15th century: Sebastian Brant and Johannes Trithemius.