Jubilate

“THE very last time I ever was here,” he said, “I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead.” —He was a man I had met with somewhere before, But how or when I now could recall no more.

“The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morning Spread out as a sea across the frozen snow, Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning The priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.

“The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air, Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes When I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there At a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.

“And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, haut-boys, and shawms, And violoncellos, and a three-stringed double-bass, Joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms; And I looked over at the dead men’s dwelling-place.

“Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see, As it were through a crystal roof, a great company Of the dead minueting in stately step underground To the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.

“It was ‘Eden New,’ and dancing they sang in a chore, ‘We are out of it all!—yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!’ And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see As you see the stage from the gallery. And they had no heed of me.

“And I lifted my head quite dazed from the churchyard wall And I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call. But—” . . . Then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup, And onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up.