And here beneath it is all as bad, For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so; To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad? But up and down and to and fro, They cannot even bury a man; And tho' we paid our tithes in the days that are gone, Not a bell was rung, not a prayer was read; It is that which makes us loud in the world of the dead; There is none that does his work, not one; A touch of their office might have sufficed, But the churchmen fain would kill their church, As the churches have kill'd their Christ. 3. See, there is one of us sobbing, No limit to his distress; And another, a lord of all things, praying To his own great self, as I guess; And another, a statesman there, betraying His party-secret, fool, to the press; And yonder a vile physician, blabbing The case of his patient—all for what? To tickle the maggot born in an empty head, And wheedle a world that loves him not, For it is but a world of the dead. 4. Nothing but idiot gabble! For the prophecy given of old And then not understood, Has come to pass as foretold; Not let any man think for the public good, But babble, merely for babble. For I never whisper'd a private affair No, not to myself in the closet alone, But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house; Everything came to be known: Who told him we were there? 5. Not that gray old wolf, for he came not back From the wilderness, full of wolves, where he used to lie ; He has gather'd the bones for his o'ergrown whelp to crack; Crack them now for yourself, and howl, and die. 6. Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip, And curse me the British vermin, the rat; I know not whether he came in the Hanover ship, But I know that he lies and listens mute In an ancient mansion's crannies and holes : Arsenic, arsenic, sir, would do it, Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls! It is all used up for that. 7. Tell him now she is standing here at my head; : She comes from another stiller world of the dead, Stiller, not fairer than mine. 8. But I know where a garden grows, Fairer than aught in the world beside, All made up of the lily and rose That blow by night, when the season is good, To the sound of dancing music and flutes: And I almost fear they are not roses, but blood; He linkt a dead man there to a spectral bride; For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes, Would he have that hole in his side ? 9. But what will the old man say? He laid a cruel snare in a pit To catch a friend of mine one stormy day; Yet now I could even weep to think of it; For what will the old man say When he comes to the second corpse in the pit? 10. Friend, to be struck by the public foe, |