by Robert Nelson
The swaying corpse upon the wall
Grows rotten with the waning light;
And crawling shadows of the night
Lie on the body like a pall.
Dead spirits dance upon the slope;
Blatant are bat-things overhead;
But now the revenants have fled,
The glad fantasias yet grope.
Only the ghouls are gently stirred
By tainted gusts lost from the gale;
And in the faun-infested vale
Wild screeches of a fiend are heard.
Impending o'er the noisome spawn,
In glaucous haze the Phosphor steals--
Thence to Azrael's eyes reveals
The wrestling wraiths on death's dark lawn--
Fast scaling up the ebon sky
To cull and slay the gnawing blight,
All cool of the corpse's mute delight,
Or if the baneful fiend should die.
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