Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/124

 And ’mid the brothers, some with cope on,

Some half unlaced, some girthed and hooded,

He rushed in, nose and eyeballs burning,

Priests, flagons, possets overturning,

And stammered out his fatal message.

Ah! who but Arno’s primal poet

Could paint those brown saints’ rage—to presage

The Calvin roast—and then forego it

’Twas maddening—to neglect the warning,

Some shrieked, popes, bulls, bills, ruin, scorning,

Some, rent twixt avarice and hatred,

Slouched blubbering on the wine-splashed table,

With epileptic eyes and pate red

While others swift unloosed the cable

That girthed their palpitating paunches:

Some sat bolt upright on their haunches

With stony eyes inanely staring:

One roared out Psalms, a firebrand waving,

And one, his scanty tonsure tearing,

Fell flat face downward on the paving,

While one drawled out, the bursar Florian,

Their butchers’ bills to tunes Gregorian.

But Fuchs, who knew, and knowing, grieved

How thin the plank ’twixt them and ruin,

With one wild yell his soul relieved,

And then such storms of frenzy flew in

That every monk’s hood-cowlèd ear rings

And tonsures blaze like backwood clearings,

Each hair erect, as through them whistled,