world's eternal lie,.
More than all things and throughout every place,
Which having seen I were content to die.

But I have sought thee and I have not found;
Wherefore my soul is banish'd from delight,
And sitteth joyless as a madman bound
Seeing vain visions in the loathed night.

I know not even that I do not know,
But all things waver before me to and fro;
As one half head that would be dead I lie.

And thou, Death, if thy face be really fair,
I know not, or but renewal of vanity;
Wherefore mine eyes have seen the last despair.




HEGEL


Because my hope is dead, my heart a stone,
I read the words that Hegel once did write—
An idiot gibbering in the dark alone—
Till on my heart and vision fell the night.




MONOTONY


A dead corpse full of wormy questionings,
Beneath the open sky my soul lies dead,
Shameless and rotten and unburied,
For whom eternity no difference brings.

Only the wind my loathed incense flings
Afar afar; only above my head
Day passes, night returns when day is fled,
Unchangeable return of changeless things.

Unto the dead all things bring only pain,
And evermore my perish'd heart is woe
For the vile worms that gnaw it lying low;

While the dead days, like to an endless chain,
Pass ever o'er my body cruelly slow,
And evermore with pain return again.




SEPULTURE


My heart is but a tomb, where vain and cold
My dead hopes lie: encoffin'd there my Pride
Lies dead, and my Life's Gladness crucified,
And there my Morning Joy long turn'd to mould;

And there like once-lov'd corpses dead and old
My Victory that long long since hath died,
And all my Hopes lie shrouded side by side,
For whom no eyes have wept, no dirges toll'd.

And there insensate on the darken'd floor
Despair a maniac still doth howl and scream,
Among all these long dead alive alone;

Among these things I sit upon a throne,
In endless contemplation evermore;
Nor these suffice to break my iron dream.




MISERRIMUS


In the last hopeless depth of hell's dark tomb
Wherein I sit for aye with bowed head
In anguish and great sorrow buried
Where never sun the blackness doth illume,

I saw pass by me through the bitter gloom
All them whom life with deepest grief hath fed,
Whom also here among the hopeless dead
Through hell pursueth maniac, gnashing doom.

Me there forever crusht to hopeless stone
They passt by, all the damn'd; they shall not know
Through all eternity but only woe,
Now hear no sound but sound of them that groan.

And unto me that sat than these more low,
These seem'd like happy gods that heaven own;
They past away; and there in hell alone
My heart took up again its ancient woe.




SCORN


Dead am I, and ye triumph o'er me dead,
Ye that within mine eyes have found your home,
Ye that are soft and blind and white like foam,
Ye that have made of me your meat and bread.

Unto the worms I am abandoned;
Over my flesh their loathed cohorts roam;
Upon my heart whereto their hosts have clomb
Their hungry lips shall evermore be fed.

Here am I but a dead corpse in a tomb;
I shall not out from my accurs'd abode,
Inhabited by the dull worm and the toad;

Ye vile sojourners in my rotten room,
Torment me with your everlasting goad!
I scorn you till the end shall come of doom.




THE GRAVE


The loathed worms are crawling over me
All the dead hours; about my buried head
Their soft intolerable mouths are gathered,
And in my dead eyes that have ceas'd to see.
I am full of worms and rotten utterly,
Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

The lifeless earth lies close against mine eyes;
I know that I have rotted long ago;
My limbs are made one with the worms I know
Where all my head and body putrifies.
So in the earth my coffin'd ordure lies
Within my loathed shambles strait and low.

There is no thing now where my face hath been,
And all my flesh lies soft upon the floor;
Unto my heart the worms have found a door,
And all my body is to the worms akin;
They long time since their feasting did begin,
And they shall part not from me evermore.

Here lie I stretch'd out through the rotting years,
And I am surely weary of the grave,
And I have sometimes thought that I might rave,
And my two perish'd eyes almost shed tears.
There is no one that sees and none that hears;
I shall not out from my corrupted cave.

Here now forever with the lustful worms
I lie within my putrid sunken sty,
And through eternity my soul shall die.
O thou toward whom all my dead spirit squirms!
Forevermore I love thee through all terms
Until the dead stars rot in the black sky.




MUMMY


Thou art at last made perfect; from the estate
Of mushy life Death hath thee petrified.
The soft the flowing and the putrified
That made thee up, is by that artist great

Now crystalliz'd unto a changeless state.
That thing thou walkedst, nos'd and ear'd and eyed,
Eternally severely doth abide,
Sunk from the bands of them that drank and ate.

Green mummies walk above thy walled gloom,
Unripen'd mummies; they intemperate
Seek in life's beauty their high-crowned doom

In vain. But thee no passion doth illume
Stiff in the musked darkness of the tomb
Hard in stiff bands of red and nacarat.




SEPULCHRAL LIFE


Lo, all the world as some vast corpse long dead,
Fadeth and perisheth and doth decay,
Even as a corpse, in whose unhonor'd clay
The worms have long the inmost secrets read;

Even as a corpse, upon whose lowly head
The sun beats, and the holy rain doth play;
Even as a corpse, whereof the people say,
—We would that these dead bones were buried.

Even so: and in the earth's vast sepulchre
Our fainting souls their doubtful footsteps bear,
Dreaming of that which no dead men may see;

And in our passage to the second death,
We whisper strange names with our pesty breath,
Of Love, and Honour, and great Victory.




CORPSE


A dead corpse crowned with a crown of gold
Sits thron'd beneath the sky's gigantic pall;
Gold garments from its rotted shoulders fall,
And regal purple robes funereal.

Before its face a vast processional
Goes by with offerings for its great knees cold;
Its soft hand doth a golden sceptre hold;
And in its flesh lie sleeping worms uproll'd.

They that pass ceaseless by see not at all;
They know not that beneath its garments' fold
Is but a corpse, rotted, and dead, and tall.

He is accurst that sees it dead and old;
He is accurst that sees: the white worms call
For him: for him have funeral dirges toll'd.




MANKIND


They do not know that they are wholly dead,
Nor that their bodies are to the worm given o'er
They pass beneath the sky forevermore;
With their dead flesh the earth is cumbered.

Each day they drink of wine and eat of bread,
And do the things that they have done before;
And yet their hearts are rotten to the core,
And from their eyes the light of life is fled.

Surely the sun is weary of their breath;
They have no ears, and they are dumb and blind;
Long time their bodies hunger for the grave.

How long, O God, shall these dead corpses rave?
When shall the earth be clean of humankind?
When shall the sky cease to behold this death?




THE DEFILERS


O endless idiocy of humankind!
O blatant dead that howl and scream and roar!
O strange dead things the worms have gambled for!
O dull and senseless, foolish, mad and blind!

How long now shall your scent defile the wind?
How long shall you make vile the earth's wide floor?
How long, how long, O waiting ages hoar,
Shall the white dawn their gaping faces find?

O vile and simple, blind of heart and mind,
When shall your last wave roll forevermore
Back from the sick and long-defiled shore?

When shall the grave the last dead carcass bind?
O shameless humankind! O dead! O dead!
When shall your rottenness be buried?




THE GROTESQUES


I

I saw a dead corpse lying in a tomb,
Long buried and rotten to the core;
Behold this corpse shall know not evermore
Aught that may be outside its wormy room;

It lies uncover'd in the pesty gloom,
Eyeless and earless, on the charnel-floor,
While in its nameless corpse the wormlets hoar
Make in its suppurated brain their room.

And in that charnel that no lights illume,
It shriek'd of things that lay outside its door;
And while the still worms through its soft heart bore,

It lay and reason'd of the ways of doom,
And in its head thoughts mov'd as in a womb;
And in its heart the worms lie evermore.

II

I saw a dead corpse in a haughty car,
Whom in a high tomb phantom horses bore,
Aye to and fro upon the scatter'd floor;
His dead eyes star'd as though they look'd afar,

His gold wheels myriad perish'd souls did mar,
While through his flesh the ravenous wormlets tore;
He in whose eyes the worm was conqueror,
Held his high head unmoved like a star.

And as with loud sound and reverberant jar,
And as with splash of crusht flesh and dull roar,
The death-car thunder'd past the tomb-walls hoar,

Within those dead dominions the dead tsar
Receiv'd his plaudits where dead bodies are;
And in his heart the worms lie evermore.

III

I saw a dead corpse making a strange cry,
With dead feet planted on a high tomb's floor;
The dead stand round, with faces that implore;
His dead hands bless them, stretched forth on high.

—And art thou God?—and art thou majesty?—
And art thou he whom all the dead adore?—
And art thou he that hath the skies in store?—
Nay, nay, dead dust, dead dust, and vanity.

And wouldst thou rise up to the lighted sky?—
Nay, nay, thy limbs are rotten on the floor;
Thou shalt not out from thy polluted sty;

Thou wouldst become divinity once more,
Thou dreamest of splendour that shall never die
And in thy heart the worms lie evermore.

IV

I saw a dead corpse lying on the floor
Of a tomb; worms were in its woman's head,
Its black flesh lay about it shred on shred,
And the dead things slept in its bosom hoar.

And evermore inside that loathed door,
It turn'd itself as one upon a bed,
It turn'd itself as one whom sleep hath fled,
As one that the sweet pangs of passion bore.

And from its passionate mouth's corrupted sore,
And from its lips that are no longer red,
Came forth love's accents; and it spake, and said.

—The Pleiades and night's noon-hours are o'er,
And I am left alone in wearyhead.
And in its heart the worms lie evermore.




DEAD DIALOGUE


1st Corpse.

I would now that the sweet light of the sun
Might once again shine down upon my face;
So weary am I of my rottenness.

2nd Corpse.

Rejoice that now at least thou art done with life;
This thing shall nevermore return.

1st Corpse.

At last
My body is aweary of the tomb;
It is a hundred years since in the grave
I have lain down between four narrow walls,
Shut up with putrid darkness and the worm.
There is no flesh upon my body now,
That was so long a-rotting; on my shelf
Here am I now nothing but stinking bones,
That have had life beneath the face of the sun.

3rd Corpse.

I am not yet utterly putrified,
And the worms yet within my flesh abound;
I do repent me that I did not learn
What life was, while I liv'd beneath the sun—
At least then I might think of what I had done;
But I am rotten, and I have not liv'd.

1st Corpse.

I would that I might leave this place of ordure
And look once more upon the face of the world,
Where the sun is.

2nd Corpse.

O foolish ragged-bones,
Wouldst thou show forth thy dripping excrements,
And shredded rottenness to the face of day?—
Stink and be still, and leave us here in peace.

1st Corpse.

Envy me not, O stench, slop-face, dung-eyes;
My bones are clean and dry as the tomb's walls,
And stink not; as for thee, thou art a sink.

2nd Corpse.

Envy me not, thou, that I am so sweet
The black worms love me; hungry were that worm
That on thee preys.

4th Corpse.

Be silent, both ye dead and rotten things;
Lo I, that was unburied yesterday,
Am fair and smooth and firm, and almost sweet;
If that I were not dead, one might me love.

3rd Corpse.

Is it so sweet a thing, this love, this love?

2nd Corpse.

Thy lips are green for kissing, and streaks of black
Streak over thee where the worms have not yet been!

4th Corpse.

Ha, ha, I know wherefore thou speakest so:
Because thy torture is too great for thee,
And the worms' gnawing, and thy body's rottenness,
And the rottenness in thy bones and in thy brain!

1st Corpse.

O beautiful, O dead, O spit upon,
He speaketh well that is but lately dead;
Thy flesh lies all along thee like green slime,
O pudding gravied in thine own dead sauce!

2nd Corpse.

Rotten one!

1st Corpse.

Dung-heap!

2nd Corpse.

Dead one!

1st Corpse.

Beast! beast! beast!
Therefore perhaps, thou art so early dead?

2nd Corpse.

They say that those thou lovedst were not men,
O goat-face—Shall I say what was thy death?

4th Corpse.

Come, come, my brothers, be not so slanderous;
We have all been the same upon the earth.

3rd Corpse.

Thou sayest true, new brother.

1st Corpse.

Thou sayest true.