Betelguese Part 2

To pace these aisles of whistling heat, Eternal signs of souls gone wrong!

And when a skelp cleaves siffling doom, And vapours scyle a greenish ghaut, Rebellious vandals stamp their feet As rulling Cyons wield h.e.l.l's p.r.o.ng.

Then domes and walls sweat savage rage, Each gangrel gnome is toss'd by fear, The tombs provoke each inmate's keep To curse the horrid atmosphere, Where ghouls their battle-axes wage, Froth devils' pomp throughout the year; Where lizards o'er tath do creep, Bivouacs a horney-fisted seer.

To groves of wind-swept ulmus' bear, And siffling mists beyond a bell That hide veiled shadows of a peak Above the stationed domes of red, Augueries of a marching pair,-- Twin demons of unconquered h.e.l.l!

Spell visions that the soffins leak That felt the besom of the dead, Just as the Twilight's scarlet urn Is seen from heights unfathomed, strong.

There runnels of green waters cold, Toss lepers from their murky breast; There venom-oils and tapers burn To light the way of souls gone wrong,-- Blood-stained each idol's crown of gold Where battle-wrecks seek figent rest!

To the distant porphyry mount Where agate torches s.h.i.+ne most bright, And syrinx's float music's charm O'er the jargling herds of tombed, A joggling javel begins to count, With bleary eyes of grayish light, The rubies on each idol's arm, And whisper words unto the tombed.

Now to a churning gyre's pool We haste to see a weird show, Where Lordly Helms in vials squirm, Each mongrel scoundrel's olpe of wine!

A Morgan gambles with a ghoul, A Belmont writhes with sizzling woe, A Rockefeller leads each worm, Another's known as T. F. Ryan.

The browless whelp of oily fame Is made to dig the burning soil, The sheckles of a Pierpont king, Secures no prestige in this Inn.

The gambling ghost whose middle name Is "Fortune", spins within the swirl Of waters cold and oceans' ring, Condemned, forsaken for his sin.

On earth they plunder'd, robbed and stole From month to month and year to year; There Franchise-stealers cracked with leers As Plebeians stung, groaned with might.

Now one and all d.a.m.n'd on this shoal Yuck addling brains and shriek with fear, Now all shrink at h.e.l.l's laughing seers As Remorse storms the ughly night.

Here Pat McCarrens filch no vote, A Grady eats no mellow pea, A Murphy owns no City Hall, No Jeromes skew at dices' song.

On Vellum gray their sins are wrote To murmurs of each sullen lee, Racked with the wand of death and pall, They blast their heads as souls gone wrong.

No presidential timber's found Within these caverns, pools or dung; No two-faced B's or bloated T's, Lie to laymen, va.s.sals, hordes.

Here politicians hear the sound Of ballots that their hearts have wrung, Of burning pyres and blister'd lees That scorch these one-time kings and lords.

Here Conventions hold our eyes As Dragons smite a gravel dome.

The kings of Finance, skinn'd and shorn, Are list'ners in these halls of gloom.

Their deeds are read, they heave giant sighs, Thumb-screws and wracks rake skin and bone, In cajons bleak, each corpse forlorn, Is sunk as trophies of king Doom.

No Depews sell their patron's love, No faffling Platts guard treasures strong, No Parkers, Roots,--The crafty things!

Betray a country's hope and trust.

No palm is brought them by a dove, No minions shant their praise in song, The poisoned zimbs add to the stings Of conscience lost and raging l.u.s.t.

Each one-time king of earthly fold Is skinn'd alive then cooked in oil; Some frazzled Astor dames and fools Now eat their claws and chew a bone.

A monarch known as Leopold, Writhes in a cavern's squeezing coil; Here man-born helms are but the tools Of Satan and each prowling gnome.

Their toes are screwed and eyes are bored, Their ears are shorn and lips are split, Each head is cracked, all tongues are cut, By vypers red and b.l.o.o.d.y ghouls.

Affrighted as the dames are gored, Each Sybarite his teeth doth grit, The huddled pirates in a hut, Shriek help unto the roaring pools.

And moaning airs their sorrows tell That some unfathomed force hath bred.

Night-hawks rasp sins of women, men, Who sold their honour, soul and name.

And tower'd screes that pierce giant h.e.l.l Are treasure-houses for the dead: Each rich man writhes within a den, Society dames proclaim their shame.

And offal, shard and putrid dung, Is by affluent daughters born.

When in the ribboned mists above A beacon flares and torches burn, A Soldan from green earth is hung; His heartless queen is cursed, forsworn, Their souls house neither hope nor love Within d.a.m.nation's burning urn.

Repress'd with hate and unspent rage As charnel howls clash in each hall, Each gyving hydra rends the air With curses, hawps as rambling souls, Lured by a grizzled warrior sage, Storm moats before each bristling wall And die as imps are bade to swear-- Infernal trophies of these shoals!

Immingled dreams their senses storm As Westward shadows cloak each lee; Where censers blaze they drag their limbs, These cursed, forsaken whelps of h.e.l.l!

Their ghastly sins on vellum's sworn, Attested, sealed, they bend each knee!

Where devils rant blood-curdling hymns, A raving wench drowns in a well.

Unto the coals of fevered pyres That glare like carcants red and white; And glowing rubies in the dust That lure each man-born skink and whelp, The spastic cries and moaning sighs Attest to Typhon's weird dight,-- And Satan's ichor of green l.u.s.t, Provokes the las.h.i.+ng heat and skelp.

Within the cathedral vaults of gloom, The gorgeous pomp of the flayed, In banded gold and marble flesh, Speak of auguries to the d.a.m.n'd, Till, when censers' lights flare and bloom, And shapes of men are laid arrayed In gomes of steel, we tred the mesh And grandeur of a conjured stand, Where coral wreathes each hussy's brow, Whose broken arms portray h.e.l.l's l.u.s.t, Of whistling winzes, syrt and domes That gleaming broths in anger wrought, 'Mid hiss of snakes and oils. So now, When plundered tombs betray their trust, And vandals screech at roving gnomes, All raise a voice and curse each ghaut.

Beyond the ring and roll of h.e.l.l-- And spiral lofts of quartz and gold-- We skirr upon the crutch of haste And cleave the abyss, cold and bleak.

There jejune fossils lie to tell Of pleiocene days' garnered fold; Gray bones that pierce this weird waste Lie mounted on a torrid peak; Princ.i.p.alities of the past, Lie scatter'd in the mildewed dust; Serai's built in ages gone, Now crumble at a sound, a voice.

And Boulders that the Djinnee cast As Vengeance swirl'd the heated dust, Now rock as devils rasp a son, And vampyres dance round and round.

And where a dim, unstudded dome Leak odours strong and palsied light-- Twins of the Gloom! as some mad soul a.s.sails Typhon's battling walls, A glowing fire of this home Of deadly dews and poisoned night, Bathes monstrous this untower'd shoal.

Convulsed with fear as aisles and halls Roar like giant cauldrons mad for gore, Icarian gumps and devils bold, a.s.sault each marshalled mount and scree.

Then spectacles greet us again Upon this shadowed, foreign sh.o.r.e: A pond'rous dw.a.n.g of virgin gold, Is filched from altars that we see, Just as the tomb-sweats pour like rain.

And distant ghauts where jazels burn,-- (A burning tomb where hissing oils Drip on a flayed and bottled wench That some abhorrent sp.a.w.n of death Filched from the wrack of Terror's urn As stagnent breath unwinds its coils) Spout uncoped shard unto a bench Where sights of men-wrecks gasp for breath, Whilst quickly from a bowelless whelp Drop ghastly stones of scarlet hue That brazen imps hurl thro' the air At sobbing wraiths and furrowed souls, Wrought by a fiend and conjured skelp As men and women hold a pew Within a turgid, acrid lair,-- Infernal aisles of yawning shoals!

T'ward cyphers bright and terrible, Where Doom sits poised as Satan yawns,-- Each Vulture's home and arid shoal!

We hurl a curse and d.a.m.n the hordes That call each monster horrible.

Then craftily he moves his p.a.w.ns (Whenas a moan escapes each soul) As bleary sons of n.o.ble lords Sway twin censers' fumes in silence, Until in myrtle groves we see A blazing arch where agate eyes Doth peer malignly from a crypt Thro' turbid phials of violence,-- A scene of impish sorcery!

Where, in furbished chambers there lies-- As vypers write on evil script The ghastly deeds that sinners wrought-- A glow-worm's f.a.got that arrays Dim shapes of souls of men that were.

And cyphers nights of doomes to be, Till flaring pyres and yon red ghaut-- So monstrous bright that some one prays-- And Vizy's carvel starts to stir, Shape abhorrent signs on each lee.

Into the dusky coals we peer, And musing at the luring flames, We watch each isle of crystal green.

Anear the billows swirl with rage, 'Mid las.h.i.+ng waves that cope king Fear To strands and sands where elfin games Make rich each midnight's fleecy dream That some Mad wand'ring, goblin sage, Provoked from coffers of each brain, Gleam in each tossing breast of foam, Or s.h.i.+nes from purple decks and domes A ruddy carcant huge and large; Or, when sea-linkt clouds, garbed in rain, And behemoths sink to briny home, A star that s.h.i.+nes from foreign zones Guide carvels old and Satan's barge O'er blue profounds of the deep, And gladden souls of men; yet, stunned, Tho' trembling, to a roaring mouth, A horn'd magician locked in death, On whom two hectic harlots peep, Sinks in abyssal depths unsummed, Whilst him he fought hastes to the South,-- A h.o.a.ry fiend of rasping breath!

And now we watch a maiden flee, Past seas and ice-mounts oriflammed With crystal diamonds red and bright, Where Persephone hath breathed a jem, And frozen jazels that we see, Alife with l.u.s.ts of curst and d.a.m.n'd, Tho' windblown, thro' the moonless night, She wanders with her anadem On golden hair; nor doth she haste When scarlet eyes peer thro' the snow, But caverned mouths of grottoes black, And storm-swept flight of dragons bold, She pa.s.ses as she treads the waste, Off to the haunts of ghoullish show, Where fires writhe and whispers track Her wake unto the peaks of cold, Above whose tower'd dome she sees The tombs of father, mother, all; Ay, now weeps she as the head-stones Letter large, her unburied kin.

Now with her trembling arms and knees, And back against the slimmy wall, She vents her tears and choking moans, A daughter cursed within this Inn.

And witches long for ease, so, Erelong they peer at waters green That pour in forges dank and cold, Whence glare the eyes of h.e.l.l in l.u.s.t As Cyclops stem the pyre's glow, 'Mid haunts of sin and purple sheen Of shales and husks of monsters told As vultures to both scale and dust.

Then wing they for the western strands Of bowered vales and lulling dells, Where silence holds the winds at bay, And myrtles stir the sylvan air.

There tow'rs and the russet sands Make fine the tunes of ringing bells That echo to the skies of gray, Where phosph.o.r.escent lanterns flare.

And twilights of the lofty aisles, Thro' silver mists and streaks of blood, Crucifixion looms cold and white; Oaths of prurient blasphemy Echo to the sequestered isles; An ivory pyx that rides the flood On which fantasms spin their light, Curse each soul's eternal enemy.

Within a pool where writhing coils Shape cyphers bold and gorey thought,-- Two shadowed sklayres of Doom and Set!

The foam-dreams of the newly dead Ascend. To hazards that the oils Eschewed, haste dryades that were taught To dance. And, whilst all souls forget The chasms deep and oriflammed, The spastic lights of a green room, Dim torches show the jeweled tombs Wherein are hid the studded crowns Of Eastern queens; or, when high-bred Dames pick from Death's unbroken womb The coral wreaths and poppy blooms, Two priestesses in scarlet gowns Curse loudly as the royal dead Are strewn with palmy leaves and dyes.

And crimsons adders on the hulls, Search for toadstools smeared with blood.

And livid lamps where vypers spoon, As some bad harlot shrieks and cries Her Nature's sins unto three skulls, A shameless gnome bathes in h.e.l.l's flood The thighs he filched from a gray tomb.

Drawn by the whispers from the wind, 'Mid glories of the hollowed night, To storm-swept vales and mounts we haste, And, in monastic halls we see, Above a greenish gyrus rind, The flick'ring flames of a light, Beneath whose subtle, shadowed waste Squat men and women that would flee The ghastly words from Vellum told, Who pluck their eyes and pull their hair,-- Beneath their feet there writhes a worm!

As bludgeons smite a leering soul.

And when a wench that Satan sold To some old seer, whose head is bare, And oily snakes in cauldrons squirm, All blast the sight and curse this shoal,-- Infernal land of Sin and Doom!

Eternal moans and sighs we hear; A swarthy demon laughs with glee.

Then, thickly from a ghastly hole The turbid dyes of blood doth bloom From minxes bold, crouched with giant fear, Provoke a sage who could not see, With feelings for her impeached soul.

Low arches of a charnel house, Above whose dome two demons sit, That guard the lamps of fateful red, Veiled whispers from a maiden's soul Cleave skyward until they arrouse A savage hound of h.e.l.l with script That holds her body's deeds. A-bed, He peers thro' shades unto her shoal, Then at his tome where sins are wrote Of wifes that sold their names in l.u.s.t, Or men that wors.h.i.+pped naught but gold.

And, when stillness holds troubled sway, A baneful imp that Conscience smote, Rasps names of those bowed in the dust: And, when thus their sins are foretold, As kinsmen strike their beasts and pray, A livid gasp permeates the air, A curdling curse a.s.sails the night.

And squats, whose scarlet venom crawls To lantern's-glow that tell the guilt Of battling demons as they swear, Malignly dumb below each light That scyle the b.l.o.o.d.y walls and halls, The life-ebb from a wench is spilt.

The phosph.o.r.escent fungus-lights Are traitors' lamps that sorrows hide; The foam-sprayed beaches that we see, Are treasure-houses for the d.a.m.n'd.

From year to year infernal nights Rasp shoals a thousand furlongs wide; In ev'ry zone, each distant lee, Holds ghastly sights of burning sand.

The headlands that we reach by day, About whose sh.o.r.e the dragons roam; And mildewed vaults of gathered bone, Where eyeless skulls and ape-shanks lie As moaning winds reel to and sway From gorey pools and tower'd dome, A goggling wraith and shambling gnome Doth forage for each fleeing sigh.

Now Sorrow that the Dooms crown'd King, Flees from the mouth of pools inflame, Whilst Lords in robes of scarlet hue, Add to the d.a.m.n'd, malignant show; Pellicles that all eyes did sting In Vengeance's law that none could tame, Flees whence two lights of dreaming blue Cleave dome-thrown shadows dress'd in woe.

A Thaumaturgist, cursed and d.a.m.n'd, Raps skulls from which a venom pours, And shakes his fists where opals burn, Whence figgum that his hands control Is charged with life; and on the sand Two witches sate their thirst in gores, Flit Fancy's wings unto a urn, (Within whose tomb there writhes a soul) And with Courage that Dawn hath bred In rivers, to whispers of the night, As wracks are dyed a crimson red, Feasts upon Doom's abhorrent shape, That fires bright, toss to each bed, And flees to realms where shadows light; Whilst Thought, in horror of the dead, Wings in mourning veils, dark as crepe, And feasts on afterglow of Trust, On cauldrons tossed to crafty Death That froths dank pomp and guidons bright, Unto a height, where falt'ring eyes, Betrayed by crystals numb in dust, Gasps at the sight with startled breath As vapours green, war with the light, Faint as the sunset's golden dyes.

All mounts of bone are tombs of weal, Each scree, a temple of king Doom; And runnels that the suns do shun, Are pools where offal reeks most strong And thro' the air giant wasps do reel; On barriers bleak, reptiles soom; A Vulture that no shard can stun Gawks at the mult.i.tudes gone wrong.

Where waters with the venom crawls To oriels, where banners float Beside a dome-thrown surf of blood T'ward letters large, that h.e.l.l hath wrought, Worm-like vapours skirr thro' the halls And reach a distant, lurid moat, Where sighs and groans upon a flood Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut-- Satellites to Destiny's crypt!

And Vespers that the Twilight brought-- More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break-- Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight; And to the dais whereunder sit A demon-quire that Circe taught, Songs that echo to the isles in lake And valley deep, ravage the night Until Idols pall at the scene.

And stationed Mounts toward the West Whose bones portray a ghastly l.u.s.t; And skulls that glare at the soulless night, Point, weeping, where the foam-waves dream: All battle-wrecks and imps haste forth Unto the phosph.o.r.escent dust And pyramidal shoals of light.

The poisons that the geysers spit To apes, where Sin in splendor reigns; And cavern'd shapes that shadows hide Behind tapers, where snarling Doom Glares at Set's tomb, where devils sit, Make vague signs to the weird flames, Flit spastic breath to regions wide And shrood each shrunken soul with gloom.

Where glozing parasites hold sway, Seck rivers dry reveal the bones Of ages that the Cyclops slew: Onyx thrones that the t.i.tans storm'd Lie in obfuscating decay; Eyeless skulls that abhorrent gnomes Wield in hands that reek with the dew That solemn Death in tombs hath worm'd, Stare at the scene as willows sigh: And tapers of the Mount's crown'd witch (Whenas each carcant fades from view) Seek shadows that the tombs have cast Upon the conjured, wind blown sky, Where Syrian altar-lamps make rich The palace-domes whereon the dew Sits like a star and beams upon the vast, Phantasmagoric glory of Death, Of G.o.dly helms housed in a crypt.

And where a livid beacon flares-- (A rock that some giant storm hath split) In mourning robes and rasping breath, Before a grave where devils sit, A Queen at whom a lizard stares, Sobs her grief and woe that tears writ Deep into the phorphyry mount: This, then, is Death's home, vale and Tomb!

Where Lancers, made equal with the dust When revolt storm'd each kingdom's fold, And clas.h.i.+ng wars spun Hecate round The pungent halls of spastic Doom; When in each Nation fought king l.u.s.t As siffling vapours gleamed like gold, Ten legions whom the G.o.ds forsook Wrought havoc on this Cauldron's sh.o.r.e: Then Dragon-guidons led the march As battle-axes smote vile Lords; Stout hears that with king Vengeance shook, Fought with valour's s.h.i.+eld for more gore; a.s.saults that rasped each Temple's arch, Spake conquest o'er shambling hordes.

This tale on ghastly Vellum's writ, More sypher'd woes the walls proclaim; Where goblins fondle crumbling bones, There lies a death-thrown monster cold.

Perturbed at writings on yon script As moaning airs gaunt Sorrows name, Each ape attests in faffling tones-- Flight to the Dragons' haunted fold.

Affrighted at this fearful gaze As coals blaze like twinkling jewels, Night-hawks that croak at bat-faced owls Gledge at each gnome that digged a bone From some bleak pool, and pierce the haze Where censers blaze. Unconquered ghouls Who laugh and leer at demon howls, Make signs unto the h.e.l.l-lashed foam-- j.a.pes that the d.a.m.n'd fear in each knell!