A Dead Man
A dead man dead for weeks
Is sickening food for lover’s eye
That seeks and ever seeks
A fair one’s beauty ardently!
Did that thing live of late?
That sodden thing of ebony head
With empty holes that gape?
Good God! will I be that, when dead?
Perhaps those blackened bones
Were subtly fashioned hand and wrist
That made sweet violin tones,
Or held a face till lips had kissed!
Perhaps—but, no! it cannot be,
This thing is but a heap of slime—
A hideous mockery—
The man is safe from rotting Time:
Then stick it under ground!
It is a thing for spades not tears;
And make no mourning sound,
And finished, have no fears:
For, glowing in some woman’s heart,
He lives embalmed, unchanging, and apart!
Then come! let’s kill the memory of this place—
O friends! it had a hideous, ebony face!
