Ballad of Grinning Death

Upon a decent truckle-bed
A woman lay, and she was dead.
A curtain flapped before a pane

Of glass made sharp and thick by rain.
A mouse ran softly on the floor.
Beyond the rattling attic door,
A wind was moaning more and more,

It wailed as waves against a shore.

A candle with a drowning wick
Swaled in an old tin candlestick.

A haggard man was writing there,
Composing words with dreadful care.
He ran his fingers through his hair,
And sang a song which cut a glare

Like purple lightning through the gloom
Of that wind-muffled, quiet room.

He sang: "Come, comrades, drink it up,

The bubbling, beading, blazing cup,

The licking, glittering serpent wine,

Drink, Bully Boys, the candles shine,

Women, and lights --"The strained voice cracked
Upon a chilly sob which hacked
The melody to bits, and left

Only a poor old man bereft.

He rose and wavered through the room,
His fingers struck upon the doom

Of Death and rang a hollow sound

As pulses beating round and round,

All round and round, but in that place
Where lay her tired, peaceful face,

He knelt as in a neutral space.

He kissed the glassy hands, a moan
Wrenched from him by their feel of stone;
He passed his arms about the thin
Old shrunken form and held it in
His shivering grasp, and called her name,
And told her it was he who came;
He babbled love words, beating them

Harshly against Death's frozen phlegm.

The rain struck loud upon the sash.
Over the roof, the rain-drops' dash
Drew thickly to a single fall

Of water leaping down a wall.

He must not pause, he could not wait,
The hour was growing very late.

The money for the funeral.

He crept back to his blotted scrawl.

And there all night he wept and tore
Out of his bleeding mind a score
Of rousing drinking-songs, that rang
In obscene choruses, a clang
Of goblets clattered through the staves,
And on he wrote as one who raves:
"Drink, Men, for wine is crowning sweet"? --
He dropped his head upon the sheet,
He clutched his hands until the bones
Stood out upon the skin like stones,
And cursed God as a frantic child
Screams at a dream. Then, weak and mild,
He pleaded: "Do not leave me, Dear.
Oh, Mary, Mary, can you hear?"

The silence hissed upon his ear.

Then he would jerk upright and sing:
"A ring-a-ding, a ring-a-ding.
For brandy is a handsome thing.

Ale is for topers who have to be careful,
Claret for gentlemen grown somewhat fearful.
Sherry for men with a long roll of yellows,
But brandy and rum for the best of good fellows.
Ho! Boys! Drinking boys,
Clap your glasses and make a noise,
Shouting brandy and rum, Ho! Ho! Ho!
Calling for whiskey and gin." Below
He heard the choking gutters spill,
The wind beyond the door was shrill,

The corpse beneath its sheet lay still.

To him this was not something dead,
He did not know her so. Instead
What lay there was his sleeping wife,
The hair-spring of his dredged-out life,
The reason why his dreams were good,
The springing freshness of his blood.
The edges of his life drew in

And hung about him, curled and thin,
He felt himself an empty shell
Swirled by a wind across a fell,

And Heaven was just a sneer of Hell.

A near-by steeple rang a chime,

For time is time, and passing time,
And wearily he found a rhyme

And nailed it to a loud-laughed jest.
He cursed the man at whose request
The drinking-songs were ordered. Then
He rose and came to her again,

And stood and stifled in his pain.

The near-by steeple chimed and tolled

That life was old and songs were gold,

And drinking-songs were red and sweet,
And morning crawling down the street.
He smoothed her quiet, quiet hair,

He pulled the curtain so no glare
Should be upon her anywhere,
Then took his songs and left her there.

Outside the wind blew sharp and strong.
A dwindled sunlight fled along

The endless streets. He ached for sleep,
His eyes were eyes which may not weep.
He had no thought about it all

But money for a funeral.

His brains were leaping in a fire

To gratify her last desire.

A hearse, a coffin, and a pall

To give her decent burial.

And then the snow began to fall.