death

DEDICATION

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,

All stark and cold the merchant lay,
All cold and stark lay he.
And who hath killed the fair merchant?
Now tell the truth to me.

Oh, I have killed this fair merchant
Will never again draw breath;
Oh, I have made this fair merchant
To come unto his death.

Oh, why hast thou killed this fair merchant
Whose corpse I now behold?
And why hast caused this man to lie
In death all stark and cold?

Oh, I have killed this fair merchant
Whose kith and kin make moan,

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
  (Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
           Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle
Now he's kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he'll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
  (Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!
           Jail him and joy.

He was fafafather of all schemes for to bother us

On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.

In the times when Christ was seeded around,
More than one illustrious monk, today unknown
Took for a studio the funeral grounds
And glorified Death as the one way shown.

—My soul is a tomb, an empty confine
Since eternity I scour and I reside;
Nothing hangs on the walls of this hideous sty.

O lazy monk! When will I see

1 When the last faint red of the day is dead,
2 And the dim, far heaven is lit
3 With the silvern cars
4 Of the orient stars,
5 And the winged winds whimper and flit;

6 Then I rise through the dome of my aerodrome,
7 Like a giant eagle in flight;
8 And I take my place
9 In the vengeful race
10 With the sinister fleets of night.

11 As I rise and rise in the cloudy skies,
12 No sound in the silence is heard,

I.

WHEN Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand,
The symbol of her chosen land.

II.

Majestic monarch of the cloud,

Said a monkey unto me:
"How I'm glad I am not you!
See, I swing from tree to tree,
Something that you cannot do.
In gay greenery I drown;
Swift to skyey hights I scale:
As you watch me hang head down
Don't you wish you had a tail?

"Don't you wish that you could wear
In the place of stuffy clothes,
Just a silky coat of hair,
Never shoes to cramp your toes?
Never need to toil for bread,
Round you nuts and fruit and spice;
And with palm tuft for a bed
Happily to crack your lice?"

Bill has left his house of clay,
Slammed the door and gone away:
How he laughed but yesterday!

I had two new jokes to tell,
Salty, but he loved them well:
Now I see his empty shell.

Poker-faced he looks at me;
Peeved to miss them jokes - how h
Would have belly-laughed with glee!

He gives me the pip, I swear;
Seems just like he isn't there:
Flown the coop - I wonder where?

Bill had no belief in "soul";
Thought the body was the whole,
And the grave the final goal.

Enthusiastic was the crowd
That hailed him with delight;
The wine was bright, the laughter loud
And glorious the night.
But when at dawn he drove away
With echo of their cheer,
To where his little daughter lay,
Then he knew-- Fear.

How strangely still the house! He crept
On tip-toe to the bed;
And there she lay as if she slept
With candles at her head.
Her mother died to give her birth,
An angel child was she;
To him the dearest one on earth . . .

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,