The Cry of the Mad Moonshee

If the blossoms were beans,I should know what it means--This blaze, which I certainly cannot endure;It is evil, too,For its colour is blue,And the sense of the matter is quite obscure.Celestial truthIs the food of youth;But the music was dark as a moonless night.The facts in the songWere all of them wrong,

And there was not a single sum done right;Tho' a metaphysician amongst the crowd,In a voice that was notably deep and loud,Repeated, as fast as he was able,The whole of the multiplication table.

So the cry flapped off as a wild goose flies,And the stars came out in the trembling skies,And ever the mystic glory grewIn the garden of blue chrysanthemums,Till there came a rumble of distant drums;And the multitude suddenly turned and flew.... A dead ape lay where their feet had been ...And we called for the yellow palankeen,And the flowers divided and let us through.

The black-barred moon was large and lowWhen we came to the Forest of Ancient Woe;And over our heads the stars were bright.But through the forest the path we travelledIts phosphorescent aisle unravelledIn one thin ribbon of dwindling light:And twice and thrice on the fainting trackWe paused to listen. The moon grew black,But the coolies' faces glimmered white,As the wild woods echoed in dreadful chorusA laugh that came horribly hopping o'er usLike monstrous frogs thro' the murky night.

Then the tall thin man as we swung alongSang us an old enchanted songThat lightened our hearts of their fearful load.But, e'en as the moonlit air grew sweet,We heard the pad of stealthy feetDogging us down the thin white road;And the song grew weary again and harsh,And the black trees dripped like the fringe of a marsh,And a laugh crept out like a shadowy toad;And we knew it was neither ghoul nor djinn:It was Creeping Sin! It was Creeping Sin!

But we came to a bend, and the white moon glowedLike a gate at the end of the narrowing roadFar away; and on either hand,As guards of a path to the heart's desire,The strange tall blossoms of soft blue fireStretched away thro' that unknown land,League on league with their dwindling laneDown to the large low moon; and againThere shimmered around us that mystical strain,In a tongue that it seemed we could understand.