white front and flabby face
Bent o'er the groaning board. Twelve brave men droned the grace;
But with instinctive tact, in courtesy to their Host,
Omitted God the Son and God the Holy Ghost,
And to the God of Battles raised their humble prayers.
Then, then, like thunder, all the guests drew up their chairs.
By each a drinking-cup, yellow, almost, as gold.
(_The blue eye-sockets gave the thumbs a good firm hold_)
Adorned the flowery board. Could even brave men shrink?

Why if the cups _were_ skulls, they had red wine to drink!
And had not each a napkin, white and peaked and proud,
Waiting to wipe his mouth? A napkin? Nay, a shroud!
This was a giant's feast, on hell's imperial scale.
The blades glistened.

The shrouds--O, in one snowy gale,
The pink hands fluttered them out, and spread them on their knees.
Who knew what gouts might drop, what filthy flakes of grease,
Now that o'er every shoulder, through the coiling steam,
Inhuman faces peered, with wolfish eyes a-gleam,
And grey-faced vampire Lusts that whinneyed in each ear
Hints of the hideous courses?

None may name them here?
None? And we may not see! The distant cauldrons cloak
The lava-coloured plains with clouds of umber smoke.
Nay, by that shrapnel-light, by those wild shooting stars
That rip the clouds away with fiercer fire than Mars,
They are painted sharp as death. If these can eat and drink
Chatter and laugh and rattle their knives, why should we shrink
From empty names? We know those ghastly gleams are true:
Why should Christ cry again--_They know not what they do?_
They, heirs of all the ages, sons of Shakespeare's land,
They, brothers of Beethoven, smiling, cultured, bland,
Whisper with sidling heads to ghouls with bloody lips.

Each takes upon his plate a small round thing that drips
And quivers, a child's heart.

Miles on miles
The glittering table bends o'er that first course, and smiles;
For, through the wreaths of smoke, the grey Lusts bear aloft
The second course, on leaden chargers, large and soft,
Bodies of women, steaming in an opal mist,
Red-branded here and there where vampire-teeth have kissed.

But white as pig's flesh, newly killed, and cleanly dressed,
A lemon in each mouth and roses