A Cento Poem...

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea,
But on the hither side of that loud morn
Came Tristram, saying, "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?
Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!
You go not till I have set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you.
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
By thy hydroptic father catechized,
Thou shalt not live; that I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder."
He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found
A doom that ever poised itself to fall---
"The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea."
I shook him well from side to side
Until his face was blue:
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"
As though he came to kill a cockatrice,
Then, sputtering thro' the hedge of splinter'd teeth:
"The sequel of to-day unsolders all--
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees
And may there be no moaning of the bar, when I put to sea,
But I am constant as the northern star..."
His eyes narrowed to slits when he was done,
And he seized the skull again between his teeth
grinding it as a mastiff grinds a bone.
O my dear brother, what is there to say?
In my vision I already see a time---
And it is not far distant from this day---
In which the pulpit shall denounce by writ
The shameless jades that Florentines call ladies,
Who go about with breasts bare to the tit.