* * * * *
How its white teeth glint and glisten! Listen! Am I mad! O, listen!
No! It speaks! I hear a whisper rattle through its hollow jaws!
“With this jest my front adorning, Pale-Face, you are blindly scorning—
Sadly, sorrowfully scorning all your Being’s Primal Laws!
“Count the dim descent of ages! Turn Life’s crisp and crumbling pages!
Is a single leaf forgotten in this Golgotha of Doom?
Fool! You bear a fragile carnal shroud around your ghastly charnel
But to add another atom to the Inevitable Doom!
“I have stripped my shroud before you: You, perchance, now wear it o’er you!