"Water! water!" all over the field: To nothing but Death will that wound-voice yield. One, as he crieth, is sitting half bent; What holds he so close?--his body is rent. Another is mouthless, with eyes on cheek; Unto the raven he may not speak. One would fain kill him; and one half round The place where he writhes, hath up beaten the ground. Like a mad horse hath he beaten the ground, And the feathers and music that litter it round, The gore, and the mud, and the golden sound. Come hither, ye cities! ye ball-rooms, take breath! See what a floor hath the dance of death! The floor is alive, though the lights are out; What are those dark shapes, flitting about? Flitting about, yet no ravens they, Not foes, yet not friends--mute creatures of prey; Their prey is lucre, their claws a knife, Some say they take the beseeching life. Horrible pity is theirs for despair, And they the love-sacred limbs leave bare. Love will come to-morrow, and sadness, Patient for the fear of madness, And shut its eyes for cruelty, So many pale beds to see. Turn away, thou Love, and weep No more in covering his last sleep; Thou hast him--blessed is thine eye! Friendless Famine has yet to die. [Illustration: COME HITHER, YE CITIES! YE BALL-ROOMS TAKE BREATH! SEE WHAT A FLOOR HATH THE DANCE OF DEATH. _Canto_ IV. _p._ 22.] A shriek!--Great God! what superhuman Peal was that? Not man, nor woman, Nor twenty madmen, crush'd, could wreak Their soul in such a ponderous shriek. Dumbly, for an instant, stares The field; and creep men's dying hairs. O friend of man! O noble creature! Patient and brave, and mild by nature, Mild by nature, and mute as mild, Why brings he to these passes wild Thee, gentle horse, thou shape of beauty? Could he not do his dreadful duty, (If duty it be, which seems mad folly) Nor link thee to his melancholy? Two noble steeds lay side by side, One cropp'd the meek grass ere it died; Pang-struck it struck t' other, already torn, And out of its bowels that shriek was born. Now see what crawleth, well as it may, Out of the ditch, and looketh that way. What horror all black, in the sick moonlight, Kneeling, half human, a burdensome sight; Loathly and liquid, as fly from a dish; Speak, Horror! thou, for it withereth flesh.