Richard Hughes. Dirge. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Dirge

By Richard Hughes


TO those under smoke-blackened tiles, and cavernous echoing arches,
In tortuous hid courts where the roar never ceases
Of deep cobbled streets wherein dray upon dray ever marches,
The sky is a broken lid, a litter of smashed yellow pieces.

To those under mouldering tiles, where life to an hour is crowded—	5
Life, to a span of the floor, to an inch of the light;
And night is all feverous hot, a time to be bawded and rowdied:
Day is a time of grinding, that looks for rest to the night.

Those who would live, do it quickly; with quick tears, sudden laughter,
Quick oaths, terse blasphemous thoughts about God the Creator.	10
Those who would die, do it quickly; with noose from the rafter,
Or the black, shadowy eddies of Thames, the hurry-hater.

Life is the master, the keen and grim destroyer of beauty.
Death is a quiet and deep reliever, where soul upon soul
And wizened and thwarted body on body are loosed from their duty	15
Of living, and sink in a bottomless, edgeless, impalpable hole.

Dead, they can see far above them, as if from the depth of a pit,
Black on the glare small figures that twist and are shrivelled in it.