The Shadow-Eater

These Poems Are Dedicated to CARLO DE FORNARO Who Was the First to Understand, Appreciate and Sympathize with Them

OF THIS FIRST EDITION OF SIX-HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF “THE SHADOW-EATER” BY BENJAMIN DE CASSERES ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED ON TUSCANY HAND MADE PAPER AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR

BY Benjamin De Casseres NEW YORK WILMARTH PUBLISHING COMPANY 1917 Copyright, 1915 By ALBERT & CHARLES BONI Copyright, 1917 Assigned to WILMARTH PUBLISHING COMPANY


To Carlo de Fornaro.
Medusa! I go toward you smiling, serene; my will is granite to your stare, and I have that within me which blows out the light of hells set there within your eyes and turns to mottled stone the serpents on your head.
I have woven of my pains a masque of bronze and the summits of my deepest hells are changed into the impetuous lightnings of my will and claws of steel have come to grow upon my mutilated members.
I have violated my own graves and set the skeletons of my selves at my meal-less feasting board, and still found tender meat upon their bones, and the marrow of their ancient griefs was as hippocrene to me.