Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/80

Rh shoots. Its way was blocked presently by a creeper that lay along the road and sagged under its own weight. It was remarkable in being almost totally leafless.

The rabbit, in skipping over it, suddenly froze, as beast does in the presence of beast. But if the grotesque old Keene had been responsible for the mockery of sentience in these singular growths of South, his ghost must have rested at last. The watchers saw the rabbit pass carelessly, unmolested, over the stiff tangle of vines and disappear among the ruins of the South woods. Roman Sholla walked the few paces up to the vine, and, toeing its snarled trunks and leafless tendrills, said,

"Dead." 



Black roses sprout across the sky,

Pipes sing insensate 'neath the sea,

The clamant heads of madmen fly

And shatter with a dark outcry,

As tones transpose to deeper dye

And leaves whirl wild with jubilee

Through the mad organist's rambling brain;

In the disordered sepulcher

A lady's dead eyes strive to stir,

She dares to laugh, but all in vain;

Three-fingered hands paint a far frieze

With the black blood of vanquished devils,

Who sway and slay the music-breeze

In their daft and dying revels.

Now ebon fluids 'gin to flow

And drip with waxen candle-men;

Black disks of stone are trundling low;

From the organ's bosom fuming slow,

Fouler and sadder perfumes blow

To drown the bourns of demon ken;

Skulls flown from swarthy corpses kiss

And feed upon the organist's soul,

Which ne'er doth cease to toll and roll

Bell-like within this dusk abyss;

Fell plants and flowers writhe in wombs

Of blighted worlds remote from morn,

And musty myrrh exhales from tombs

Whirling in utmost stars forlorn.

Swart suns on sounding waters swell

The turgid notes to direr din,

And murky spirits soar from hell

To flap their cerements palpable

In the wild player's face, and tell

Jet jewels into his mouth, and spin

Mad gossamers amid his hair;

Swift raven locks entwine his throat,

His eyes no longer glare and gloat;

As from a tower high in air,

The console wakes a weirder fear;

His flaming, fitful fingers chill;

One tear he weeps, a dead man's tear:

The sable revery is still. 