Classic Poem

The wind was bitter as a curse
Above the little pavement where
The mourners waited with the hearse
To bear the madman to his crypt;
There was no colour in the air;
The very trees stood lank and stripped.

Somewhere behind the listening doors
The living lifted up the dead
We heard the creaking of the floors;
We heard their slow unheeding tread;
Dimly we saw six shadows — then
Six shadows stiffened into men.

And all at once there rose a squeal
And a startled devil leapt and slid
Along the madman's coffin lid,
A runty devil white and plump
As mushrooms by a rotten stump;
His eyes were sharp as pins of steel.

And swooping after swift as flame
And dark as blood that's partly dried,
On tilted feet a second came;
Who sliding from the coffin rim
Hopped to the hearse and climbed inside,
Pulling the other after him.

And there behind the polished glass
They grinned like monkeys in a cage.
Four demons paced with studied pomp
Down the slow steps, rump bruising rump,
Moaning as if in feeble rage.
And last one visaged like an ass

Flicked his hoofs to a two-heeled trot,
Scraping a rusty violin,
Held between nose and hairy hand;
He tripped behind the impious band
And to the tune of an old gavotte
Wheezed a low catch called " Love's a Sin. "

The crowd gave way; the living bore
The dead man to the hearse's floor.
The demons gaped like routed whores,
Baying a dirge profane and loud;
While those within sat on the corse
And thumbed their noses at the crowd.

Then with a shout they broke and ran
To find them each a cushioned seat;
One goatish, hairy and unclean
Beside the clergyman was seen,
And whispering to that holy man
Rode smirking through the village street.

The one whose shape was like an ass
Moved sidling to the hearse's wheel,
And seeing where the coachman was,
And a bare space beside him there,
Leapt through the intervening air
With a click of heel on horny heel.

Amid the hearse's decent plumes
Strange music sagged from strings and bone;
And one whose eyes were fierce with pride
Sought out the place I kept alone.
I smelt the smell of opened tombs
When he had climbed inside.

Silk violet gloves episcopal
Made suave the talons of his claws;
His paunch let yellow foldings fall
Upon the shrunken thighs; he smiled,
Clasping a gesture of applause.
A whip cracked out; drab hackneys filed.

I saw the people left and right
Stare fearfully before a sight
So solemn, fat and atheous.
" Alas for us! " the demon said,
" God is a dolt to use us thus;
Where shall we rest now he is dead?

" But, oh! what sport we had of him!
Not since the great King Solomon
Lost his ring at the world's rim
And all the demons under sea
Stretched their wings and sought the sun
Has any known such jollity. "

Through ends of streets the cortege wound:
On either side the houses stood,
Huddled, uncared for, skulls of wood,
Black windows socketed with eyes.
The demon's throat grew thick with sound:
" The madman once was otherwise.

" Joy was his in the clear light
And in the colours of the air,
In rooms where skilful violins
Renewed his adolescent sins;
Love was his, and in his sight
One fair woman seemed more fair.

" We crept on him with swaying tread;
Through sleeves and fingers whispering,
Shaped words so lewd and blasphemous
That love became a leprous thing.
We laughed each night beside his bed
Till God's own laughter answered us.

" And still we whispered, " Love is lust,
The blue but grey, a broken tune
Outtops the mouth of melody."
We turned the earth to stinking dust,
We dimmed the sun and left the moon
A twisted penny in the sky.

" We sucked his pores with pallid lips,
We mirked the blood within his heart,
We drove him forth with iron whips,
We scourged him back with bloody rods;
Then drew him to a place apart
To intimate this work was God's. "

The carriages began to wind
Into a place of mounds and stones,
Hedges of bronze-green box and yews
Green-black and clipped to curious cones.
The fiend resumed: " Tonight I choose
Another nicely fashioned mind. "

The carriage stopped. The corpse went by
And shadows in stiff folds of black.
I looked into the demon's eye
And saw therein, circled with fire,
My own eyes staring. I left the hack,
And with the fiend plashed through the mire.

We reached the grave. I looked and peered,
Nor saw a devil anywhere;
But straight the coachman seized a fife
And played an old and ribald air;
And through the prayers the parson leered
With hot eyes at the sexton's wife.

Behind the fir tree of his aunt's
Ungainly tomb, the grocer found
A fiery flask; a crape veil shrieked
And passed into a rigid trance;
And a boy laughed. The grave ropes creaked,
The coffin sank into the ground.

Earth, falling stone and gritty clay
Resounded from the coffin lid;
Spades crunched on earth and scraped on stone;
Earth fell; at last a low mound hid
The place where the madman's body lay.
The crowd dispersed. I stood alone.

I dared not move. A sudden dread
Was on me lest I turn my head
And see naught but the frozen sod
And the stiff trees which twilight blurred;
For in my thought I shaped a word
Cruel and meaningless as God.