Classic Poem

The corpse rotted from its exhibiting noose
like a horrible fruit from the bough,
witness to an unbelievable sentence,
swaying pendulous above the road.

The obscene nakedness, the protruding tongue,
and a high tuft of hair like a cockscomb,
lent it a comic look; at my horse's feet
a group of rapscallions sported and guffawed.

And the dismal remains, with lolling head,
scandalous and swollen on the green gibbet,
spread their gust of stench upon the breeze,

swinging with a censer's measured gravity.
And the sun rose in the immaculate blue,
and the land was like a poem of Tibullus.