STRANGLED.
Reading edition
There is a legend in some Spanish book About a noisy reveller who, at night, Returning home with others, saw a light Shine from a window, and climbed up to look, And saw within the room, hanged to a hook, His own self-strangled self, grim, rigid, white, And who, struck sober by that livid sight, Feasting his eyes, in tongue-tied horror shook. Has any man a fancy to peep in And see, as through a window, in the Past, His nobler self, self-choked with coils of sin, Or sloth or folly? Round the throat whipped fast The nooses give the face a stiffened grin. ’Tis but thyself. Look well. Why be aghast?