A CARRION
Rememberest thou, my sweet, that summer’s day,
How in the sun outspread
At a path’s bend a filthy carcase lay
Upon a pebbly bed?
Like a lewd woman, with its legs in air,
Burned, oozed the poisonous mass;
Its gaping belly, calm and debonair,
Was full of noisome gas.
And steadily upon this rottenness,
As though to cook it brown
And render Nature hundredfold excess,
The sun shone down.
The blue sky thought the carrion marvellous,
A flower most fair to see;
And as we gazed it almost poisoned us—
It stank so horribly.
The flies buzzed on this putrid belly, whence
Black hosts of maggots came,
Which streamed in thick and shining rivers thence
Along that ragged frame.
Pulsating like a wave, spirting about
Bright jets, it seemed to live;
As though it were by some vague wind blown out,
Some breath procreative.
