238
THE EQUINOX
Far into the fire she cast the blood,
And the flames grew twisted and red;
Her breast heaved with her passion’s flood
As a hollow-eyed ghost arose
Like a cloud of stench from the rotting dead
When a wind from a pest-house blows.
She clasped the ghost to her skinny dugs,—
No other love might she know,—
The dead man squirmed at her panting hugs,
But she had her passionate will,
And a sobbing breeze began to blow
From the top of the lonely hill.
And then a dim grey streak of dawn
Came, and the sad ghost fled,
With staring sockets and jaw-bone drawn,
Back to the desolate place;
The morning breeze grew still and dead
As it played around his face.
So we fled from the Mother Troll
Under the dawning grey;
We left the Hill of the Bloody Bowl
Ere ever the sun uprose,
But the dead man’s heart till Judgment-day
Shall there with the Troll repose.
Victor B. NEuBURG.