Actually, I think that writing a Crazy!Spike version would be funny .. ..

If you can keep your head
while everyone else is running around without a hall pass;
If you can take the cane of the Master
Without dropping your slate ....

And I enjoyed Angelus-If very much, Am.

I put the Buffy (first verse) and Spike (last section) parts together, made a few changes for the voice, and I think I've got something presentable. Comments please.

If – Spike speaking to Buffy.

If you can keep your stake when all about you
Are using theirs and needing help from you;
If you can trust yourself when Giles doubts you,
And save the bloody world again, too;
If you can die, and not be killed by dying,
Or, being resurrected, don’t deal in magics,
Or, being shagged, don’t give way to shagging,
And keep practising old time blows and kicks;

If you can live- and not make life your master;
If you can love - and not make love your aim;
If you can meet with me and old Angelus
And treat us two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear me swear and cuss
And not put me- or someone else- in plaster,
Or watch the Scooby gang break and split open,
And not just stop for brood and mopin’;

If you can turn all your friends into one group
And risk them in one more Apocalypse,
Which you might lose: and yet you stoop
And help up some poor man with bloody lips;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew,
To fight long after all hope seems to be gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”:

If you can work with devils as with angel,
And sleep with me, though it’s many nights too few,
And have sex, not missing that we don’t snuggle;
If you can live, though it’s the hardest thing to do;
If you can look, and find it’s a man not a vamp you see,
Without starting to pout or get huffy,
I’m all yours as is everything that’s in me,
And- which is more, you’ll be a Hero, Buffy!

Authors Notes: I suspect he may be drunk, hence the rhyme scheme in stanza 2. I also suspect that Buffy is nearly as bad as effulgent when you’re trying to find rhymes, hence the slightly silly line (which I know is off-metre as well).

Edited for spelling.

Cereal: Yay! I'm learning HTML and it makes the world go round (or at least the poem look readable).

That was cool. Spike would be proud, I think.

I don't that Spike would be proud. Human William might have been pleased with it. But I'm glad you liked it.

Yes, you're right. It would give the Bloody Awful Poet some degree of pride. Not that I think it's awful, though. Spike lacks patience with poems. And most people, living and Undead.

A lot of Spike's problems stem from lacking patience. It's hardly surprising he wasn't a great poet!

Imposters In This Country is finally up and archived so I can safely go back to the Special Hell making.

Oh, shit. And I need to work on the HCL/AtS that SA and I are doing. Kerfuckity.

Poor Mr. The Bloody. There are so many *decent* rhymes of effulgent.

And one would think, on edit, that when one spends all day making sure XML files are well-formed, one could START a tag properly.

Yes, there are. Though I suspect Spike would try to make them *in*decent as quickly as possible.

Even Online Rhymer [link] came up with: accent, advent, ascent, assent, augment, bent, cement, cent, comment, consent, content, convent, dent, descent, event, extent, ferment, foment, forwent, fragment, gent, hellbent, indent, intent, invent, lament, leant, lent, meant, misspent, pent, percent, portent, present, prevent, relent, rent, repent, resent, scent, sent, spent, tent, torment, trident, unbent, unmeant, unsent, unspent, vent, went

How long a poem do you think you could make from that lot, eh? Not that they're all very good. And I'm talking too much about nothing, and should shut up now.

Well done on posting Imposters, BTW.