[A necropolis on a November night]
[THE CORPSE]
"Unruly moon
Why dost Thou thus unleash Thy hounds
Which howling break the silent tune:
Our breathing space resounds
"Or chase, not to break, the orbit of old:
To wax and to wane like the waves
Which gravitate towards Thy caelestial cold
And we in our lowly graves."
[HECATE]
"Replenished is the Lantern
But the waxen waves pursue
Reflection in your extant eyes
Which lidless still wink at them
While until dawn's dew
Nature may yield to your sighs."
[THE CORPSE]
"Memento, my fellow corpses, the menacing Muse
'Mongst the carnival of Paris
In 1832 to swell His revenues
"Does there ring a knell? How this fearful Fiddler reaped
The crowd of souls
With high-handed sway His human hoard heaped
[Aside]:
"As for us, as Orpheus first in glory thrived
We his partisans
Forwent our sk**, which d**h should have revived
Outperformed and quiet."
"But fasting has done
Therefore let us our state requite."
[Enter SELENE, ARTEMIS and HECATE as onlookers-the Danse Macabre. Exeunt the goddesses. Enter DEATH playing the violin.]
[THE LATE DOCTOR]
"Let us not with cracking din harrow
Alarm the dead in bliss
Retry thy toil, Bow, mine to dismiss:
Recast thy amorous arrow
"Bow, at thy strings let wind shudder with glee
Undying harmony solemnize
No greater artist of cure shall rise
Than Thou, booked for eternity."
[THE CORPSE]
"A puppet, amenably ensnared by the Fiddler's strings
A voice at least, rising up to fall
Where some may live the frozen moments of our wasted wings
Others, indifferent, but sprawl
"Bar him who on a farandole abreast insisted
Who pardoned the Pariah in His stall
Freely for partaking in the grand parade of Paris
Within his own vocation to cover all."
[The sun is rising. THE CORPSE levels his last speech at DEATH]
"Unruly Law
I may loathe how with contenders Thou viest
When masked 'mongst a masquerade all the more
All having en ma**e enticed
"Yet I owed to Thee, which Thou didst confine
Ambition not unspoken for
But Thou canst not ever Thyself undermine
Hence mute is Thy music: Encore!"
[DEATH]
"Agile fools, do not trim -as ye define-
My fearsome form of old
With frothy flattery;
Timeless air I breathe as to engulf
Such outcries brief and bold
"Casualties, as ere long the loyal dawn
Shall Nature from Her apogee
To Her source restore
True to form, the honours of last word
Last laugh and dance are mine
To be."