Page:New poems and variant readings, Stevenson, 1918.djvu/92

72 BEHOLD, AS GOBLINS DARK OF MIEN,

, as goblins dark of mien

And portly tyrants dyed with crime

Change, in the transformation scene,

At Christmas, in the pantomime,

Instanter, at the prompter's cough,

The fairy bonnets them, and they

Throw their abhorred carbuncles off

And blossom like the flowers in May.

—So mankind, to angelic eyes,

So, through the scenes of life below,

In life's ironical disguise,

A travesty of man, ye go:

But fear not: ere the curtain fall,

Death in the transformation scene

Steps forward from her pedestal,

Apparent, as the fairy Queen;

And coming, frees you in a trice

From all your lendings—lust of fame,

Ungainly virtue, ugly vice,

Terror and tyranny and shame.