Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/32

28 :::: of vanished souls,
 * O bodies cast away
 * Into drear, darkened holes
 * Far from the light of day,
 * O tender bodies, can ye not feel at all,
 * Pent by your thick earth-wall
 * So desolate, so desolate?
 * Once quivering heart and brain,
 * Within you doth no spark o’ the spirit remain
 * To mourn your pitiful fate?

Ah, nay! though some of you in dank, moist earth were laid, Naught but a few thin boards for screen, which soon decayed;
 * Creeping and soft and quiet
 * The worms hold silent riot,
 * They burrow rotting skin and flesh,
 * Eagerly writhing through, and lose
 * Themselves amid the coiling bowels’ mesh
 * Pricking, and forth the secret juices ooze,
 * The which they suck, nor cease
 * Ever, in those abodes of ghastly peace.

And some are in dry vaults, encased in solid stone; But these fare otherwise, for ribs and gaunt breast-bone Gradually protrude as the brown and shrivelled skin Sinks slowly, and the flesh moulders away within,