Danse Macabre - Rice

Danse Macabre

Circa 1918
by Cale Young Rice (1872-1943)

I heard a great rattle of bones in the night,
And saw the dead rise from the earth—a sight!
They carried them lanterns of will-o’-the-wisps,
And their speech cackled and broke with lisps.

They flung shrouds off and got in a ring,
And knuckle to knuckle I saw them spring.
Their hair blew off, and skull to skull
The gabbled and danced, interminable.

And thigh-bone rattled with bone of thigh,
As tooth and tongue were spat at the sky.
And they chaunted a chilly, gibbering chaunt
Of how the dead have never a want.

“For what want we of the Universe,
We who have six full feet of clay
To be for our cuddling bones a nurse,”
They clacked in a rasping roundelay.

“What want we of the Universe?
We lie in the dust there snug and still;
And the quick may have their better or worse:
We have what’s best—we have our will.”

So with cackle, gabble and dance,
With rattle of joints and jig and scream,
Then back to their graves with skitter and glance
They dropt. Zounds! what an idiot dream!

From Wraiths and Realities, 1918