The Silver State

THE DANCE OF DEATH.

TRANSLATED FOR THE "SILVER STATE," FROM THE GERMAN, BY HILDA KRUGER.

The sexton looked out at the mid hour of night
On the graves where the dead were reclining:
In the churchyard they lay, 'neath the silvery light,
For the moon at its brightest was shining;
First one, then another--a horrible sight--
Came forth--man and woman--in gowns long and white,
That trailed like dank grass on the ground.
For a frolic they came; in a circle they hung,
While they swayed like the waves of the ocean--
So rich and so poor, so old and so young--
But their grave clothes hindered their motion,
And, as there need here no modesty be,
They dropped them all off and shook themselves free
Of the garments that then strewed each mound.
They swung their long arms and shook their thin shanks;
The gestures they made were astounding:
They clicked and they clacked, amid their wild pranks.
Their fingers like castinets sounding.
With a laugh in his eye, the sexton stole near,
While the Tempter of Evil spoke soft in his ear:
"Go quick--steal a shroud lying yonder."
'Twas done like a thought, and quickly he sped
Behind the great door of the tower;
And still the bright beams of the moonlight were shed
On the dance of the midnight hour
First one, then another from the rest stole away,
And began, in its shroud, itself to array,
And silence presided--again.
One only--who trips and stumbles along,
And around the graves scrambles and scratches;
No companions however, had done it this wrong,
For the scent in the air now it catches;
It shook the huge door, but backward was pressed.
To the sexton's great joy its timbers were blest
With the crosses that glittered thereon.
Its shroud it must have; else it rests not again
For soon its last hour will be chiming:
Its ghoulish adornment--it tries to obtain;
From each pinnacle on it keeps climbing.
From cornice to cornice the sexton leaps on,
But close at his heels comes the wroth skeleton
With the strides of a long-legged spider
The sexton grows pale and trembles with fear;
To return it he vainly is wanting;
But 'tis caught on the sharp iron points that are near
The point where the poor man is panting.
A cloud now crosses the face of the moon
As the clock chimes forth a deep-toned "one"!
And down falls the skeleton, crashing