Gargoyles

All Paris keeping sacrament Of musing or of melancholy, Impatient of the next event, To spend, to barter, to be spent ;— I chuckled at the folly. **T would that I were dead and damned,”’ Thinks every wiser human. ‘* Corpses have room, and men are jammed; Those offer food, and these are crammed :— And cheaper, too, is woman!” I, being neither God nor ghost, A mere caprice of matter, Hop idly in the hideous host, Content to chaff the uttermost, To cackle and to chatter. They bring their wreaths to deck the dead, As skipping-ropes the devils use them. One through the immortelles perks his head. [These sights to ghosties are as bread ; The luckless living lose them.] 87