BELOW THE PHOSPHOR

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.