BELOW THE PHOSPHOR
by Robert Nelson
The swaying corpse upon the wall
Grows rotten with the waning light;
And crawling shadows of the night
Lie on the body like a pall.
Dead spirits dance upon the slope;
Blatant are bat-things overhead;
But now the revenants have fled,
The glad fantasias yet grope.
Only the ghouls are gently stirred
By tainted gusts lost from the gale;
And in the faun-infested vale
Wild screeches of a fiend are heard.
Impending o'er the noisome spawn,
In glaucous haze the Phosphor steals—
Thence to Azrael's eyes reveals
The wrestling wraiths on death's dark lawn—
Fast scaling up the ebon sky
To cull and slay the gnawing blight,
All cool of the corpse's mute delight,
Or if the baneful fiend should die.