Classic Poem

Within the graveyard of Montmartre
Where wreath on wreath is piled,
Where Paris huddles to her breast
Her genius like a child,
The ghost of Heinrich Heine met
The ghost of Oscar Wilde.

The wind was howling desolate,
The moon's dead face shone bright;
The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed
The sad wraith with delight:
“Is it the slow worm's slimy touch
That makes you walk the night?

“Or rankles still the bitter jibe
Of fool and Pharisee,
When angels wept that England's law
Had nailed you to the Tree,
When from her brow she tore the rose
Of golden minstrelsy?”

Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde
While shrill the night hawk cried:
“Sweet singer of the race that bare
Him of the Wounded Side,
(I loved them not on earth, but men
Change somehow, having died).

“In Père La Chaise my head is laid,
My coffin-bed is cool,
The mound above my grave defies
The scorn of knave and fool,
But may God's mercy save me from
The Psychopathic School!

“Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still
I hear the din thereof
When with sharp knife and argument
They pierce my soul above,
Because I drew from Shakespeare's heart
The secret of his love…

“Cite not Krafft-Ebing, nor his host
Of lepers in my aid,
I was sufficient as God's flowers
And everything He made;
Yea, with the harvest of my song
I face Him unafraid.

“The fruit of Life and Death is His;
He shapes both core and rind…”
Cracked seemed and thin the golden voice,
(The worm to none is kind),
While through the graveyard of Montmartre
Despairing howled the wind.