Death's Jester: (t.l.b., 1803-1849)
by ALASTAIR W. R. MILLER
ON toadstool’d meadows
Beyond sable coasts,
Now rollicks Beddoes
With a storm of Ghosts;
Now (his Anatomy
Anatomiz’d)
The mandrake jollity
He ever priz’d
Whoops up the Shades
With a Göttingen bellow,
To jig with him on candled escapades, —
That once so taciturn fellow !
Beyond sable coasts,
Now rollicks Beddoes
With a storm of Ghosts;
Now (his Anatomy
Anatomiz’d)
The mandrake jollity
He ever priz’d
Whoops up the Shades
With a Göttingen bellow,
To jig with him on candled escapades, —
That once so taciturn fellow !
Yet his Avernus
Beneath our feet
Does not, here, turn us
From savage deceit.
So, Thomas Lovell
Beddoes, good chap,
Lend us a shovel, —
Or a wishing cap;
This world you spurn’d
Worsens as we wear it —
The Queen’s dead, Deluge come, and Adam turn’d
Further from his own spirit.
Dear, odd Thomas
Lovell Beddoes, hark!
Light seeps from us;
Bow us to your dark
Eden: where Death
Is a quaint wild flower;
Where the living breath
Ends not at its hour,
But swells, and boasts
In extravaganzas, —
Rocking the moonshine of the merry Ghosts
With quite inimitable stanzas.