Classic Poem

To and fro about the town
The dead men hurry up and down;

Whirling corpses, moving dust,
Driven of gold and greed and lust,

Filmy-eyed and gray of cheek,
How they babble, bite and squeak!

The sun above them; cloud-yclad,
Makes all the silver heavens glad,

The living winds shake from their wings
A sense of quick, immortal things,

The sea's mysterious passion beats
In rhythm through the troubled streets,

And down the virgin steeps of night
Like music falls the far moon's light;

But these are dead men, with no thought
Of things that are not sold or bought.

The words that move their gleaming lips —
(Bright the grave-damp glints and drips!) —

Are all of dross, are all of gold,
Are all of things they've bought and sold;

The lights that glister in their eyes —
(Filmy-bright the grave-damp lies!) —

Dart and flicker, leap and toss,
At their tales of gain and loss.

Up and down and to and fro
In hurried crowds the dead men go,

They dance, they stamp each other down,
They fight and gibber through the town,

They flail dead legs and arms about;
They writhe and sway in ghastly rout,

Their dead feet trample everywhere,
Their dead mouths taint the holy air.

The living breezes wander by
Wing'd with a message from the sky,

The sun comes up, the sun goes down,
The dreaming moon slips past their town,

But these strange dead men take no thought
Of things that are not sold or bought;

In their bodies there is breath,
But their souls are steeped in death.