The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew
  That mirrored the red moon’s crescent,
And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue,
  Dim, wavering, phosphorescent.

But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free,
  Led me on, though my blood was clotting,
Till—­ah, joy!—­I could see, on the limbs of a tree,
  Mine enemies hanging and rotting!

CAIN

Lord, shed thy light upon his desert path,
  And gild his branded brow, that no man spill
  His forfeit life to balk thy holy will
That spares him for the ripening of wrath.

Already, lo! the red sign is descried,
  To trembling jurors visibly revealed: 
  The prison doors obediently yield,
The baffled hangman flings the cord aside.

Powell, the brother’s blood that marks your trail—­
  Hark, how it cries against you from the ground,
  Like the far baying of the tireless hound. 
Faith! to your ear it is no nightingale.

What signifies the date upon a stone? 
  To-morrow you shall die if not to-day. 
  What matter when the Avenger choose to slay
Or soon or late the Devil gets his own.

Thenceforth through all eternity you’ll hold
  No one advantage of the later death. 
  Though you had granted Ralph another breath
Would he to-day less silent lie and cold?

Earth cares not, curst assassin, when you die;
  You never will be readier than now. 
  Wear, in God’s name, that mark upon your brow,
And keep the life you purchased with a lie!

AN OBITUARIAN

Death-poet Pickering sat at his desk,
  Wrapped in appropriate gloom;
His posture was pensive and picturesque,
  Like a raven charming a tomb.

Enter a party a-drinking the cup
  Of sorrow—­and likewise of woe: 
“Some harrowing poetry, Mister, whack up,
  All wrote in the key of O.

“For the angels has called my old woman hence
  From the strife (where she fit mighty free). 
It’s a nickel a line?  Cond—­n the expense! 
  For wealth is now little to me.”

The Bard of Mortality looked him through
  In the piercingest sort of a way: 
“It is much to me though it’s little to you—­
  I’ve taken a wife to-day.”

So he twisted the tail of his mental cow
  And made her give down her flow. 
The grief of that bard was long-winded, somehow—­
  There was reams and reamses of woe.

The widower man which had buried his wife
  Grew lily-like round each gill,
For she turned in her grave and came back to life—­
  Then he cruel ignored the bill!

Then Sorrow she opened her gates a-wide,
  As likewise did also Woe,
And the death-poet’s song, as is heard inside,
  Is sang in the key of O.

A COMMUTED SENTENCE