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Poems

By William Bell Scott. Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc. Illustrated by Seventeen Etchings by the Author and L. Alma Tadema

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II DEATH.
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74

II
DEATH.

Again that stage was vacant, that dusk crowd
Was murmuring as before: again that hand
Gathered the curtain; I saw rise and stand
Against the inmost blackness like a cloud,
No feature seen, but o'er his brows a proud
Spiked crown that held the thick mist clothing him,
A strong imperious creature, tall and slim,
And hateful too, thus hid within that shroud.
Stooping he raised within his long thin arms
A scared old man and rolled him up, and fled:
And all the crowd shrieked out, and muttering charms,
Threw down their fiddle-bows and merchandise,—
Around the stark corpse knelt with suppliant cries,
Nor ceased still wondering where was gone—the dead!