The Wicker Work Woman: A Chronicle of Our Own Times

by Anatole France

Where linger still the shades of Eudes, of Adalberts,

In the golden fringes of the past,

Bishops who bless not the nameless dead,

The nameless dead,

No longer bodies, but leather bottèls,

Who will to go hence,

Along the isles in the form of boats

With, for masts, but the chimney-tops.

For the drownèd will out beyond.

But pause you on the erudite parapets