First, blow the trumpets: call the people hither!
Not merely in the township! Send them further.
Set hornsmen at all cross roads: send out horsemen
With horns, a man's length, bound in brass,
Far to the north, the west. Bid them to blow
Unceasing summons, shatter the air, shake leaves
From trees decrepit. I would have the world
Sound with a bugle music from end to end.
Lead then the people hither, have the roads
Black with the mass of them at night and noon.
And when you have them, see them banked about me,
Row behind row — (how shine already the faces!) —
Like angels in Angelico's vision of heaven.
Those that were horsemen first will now be ushers —
" Stand there!" they'll cry, " no crowding! — Those behind
Will hear, feel, understand, as well as those
Who rest their chins upon him, prop their elbows
Against the coffin-lid! Stand still! be patient!"
As for the house — that must be fit as well.
Thus, as it now stands — no! it is too meagre.
The stage is bare. First, the approach is bad.
The hill, behind, that for a thousand years
Has washed its loam and leaves against these walls, —
The hill must go. So, let a thousand axes
Flash against bark: let fall a thousand oaks
With all their crying birds, small scolding squirrels,
Bees' nests and birds' nests, hornets, wasps, and snakes.
A thousand carts, then, each with a quaking tree
Outstretched in ignominy, chained and helpless, —
These, going hence, will be our first procession:
We'll bear to the sea our captives. Next, an army
With spades and picks a thousand, have them led
To music, up the hill, and then like ants
Devour him: gash him first, and swarm in the gash,
Eat inward till he's maggoty with men, —
A hollow seething shell, — and lastly, nothing.
As for the house, its walls must be of glass.
And no partitions! one vast room that's walled
And roofed with clearest crystal. There at night
We'll have great light, ten thousand flames of candles,
Ten thousand clear-eyed flames in a crystal casket:
The folk on the utmost hill will see, and cry
" Look, how the moon's caught in a crystal coffin!"
And last, myself, there in that crystal coffin,
Flooded with light, reclining half, half sitting
Propped up amid soft silks in a little box
Of brilliant glass, yet lidless. There I'll sit
Like prophet at a tomb's edge, open-mouthed,
Pale, old, obscene, white-bearded — see! my beard
Hangs on the coffin as a snow-drift hangs
On a wall of ice . . . And there, at last, I'll speak.

So, then! You see it clearly. It is night-time.
The house is bright. And I, — in an open coffin
Of glass, that's in the house, a larger coffin, —
(That, too, in the coffin that we call the world,
Large, airy, lucent, lighted with lights of stars, — )
Peer from the luminous grave's-edge into darkness
That's filled from hub to marge with staring faces.
Beautiful! Is the world here? Let it gaze, then,
And fill its idiot eyes to overflowing
With a sight not known before. Step closer, kings, —
Emperors, use your elbows as the plebs do.
Steam, if you like, with your ambitious breath
These walls that tell no lies. I'd have you hear me,
You most of all; though I forget not either
The vast grey hungry maggot-mass of men:
The little wedge-shaped darlings, in their broth
Of carrion illusions! . . . How they rot
The air they breathe, turn the green earth to poison,
People the sky with pestilence of sick fancies!
See how the whole sky swarms with dirty wings! . . .

O Man, who so corrupt all things you feed on;
Whose meditation slimes the thing it thinks;
Vile borer into the core of the universe;
Spoiler and destroyer; you, ambitious,
Crawling upon your admirable belly
For nothing but that at last your tube-shaped mouth
Should blindly thrust and suck at the innermost heart
Of the world, or god, or infinite overthrown;
Foulest and most dishonest of all creatures;
Sole traitorous worm of all things living, you
Who crown your horrible head with a dream of glory
And call yourself a king! Come closer, hear me,
I am the prophet who, as through these walls
Of innocent glass, see all things deep and clear,
The after and before, revealed or hid:
Partly among you living, partly dead,
I see your hungry mouths, but also see
With my dead eye, — (one cold eye underground
Beneath the earth's black coffin-lid, — ) the dead.
Ha! You would have my secret? You would hear
The one bright shattering trumpet whose long blast
Blows like a whirlwind myriad ghosts from tombs?
You cry to the prophet, do you, for a vision —
You'd have me, with one sombre word of magic,
Cry beauty back from dust, and set to singing
This catacomb of graves you call a world?
Press closer, kings! Swarm over me, you plebs!
Feed your rapacious eyes on me, devour
With mouths and nerves and nostrils and raw brains
This bloodless carcass that contains your secret:
Have out my heart, hold up above it candles,
Pass it among you, squeak and growl and jabber,
Stamp it beneath your feet — it's an old leaf
Will turn to a little dust . . . For there's the wonder!
I am but poverty grass; a dry grey weed;
A trifling dusty moss, fine-branched as coral — ;
One footstep makes it powder. And my secret, —
Which all my horsemen brought you here to learn, —
Is nought but this: this singing world of yours
Is but a heap of bones. Sound once the trumpet
And you shall see them, tier upon tier, profound
As God himself! Sound twice the trumpet, then,
And I shall add my bone or two. And after,
At the third blast, will all these lights puff out, —
And you may grope in the darkness, as you came.
Sound the bright horn. Shut, coffin! I am dead.