Page:Ebony and Crystal - Smith (1922).djvu/136

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THE WITCH IN THE GRAVEYARD

(After an interval)
Some predal hand doth halt the wandering air;
Now dies the throttled wind with rattling breath,
And round about a breathing Silence prowls.
(After another interval)
I hear the cheeping of the bat-lipped ghouls,
Aroused beneath the vaulted cypresses
Far-off; and lipless muttering of tombs,
With clash of bones bestirred in ancient charnels
Beneath their shroud of unclean light that crawls.***
Earth shudders, and rank odours 'gin to rise
From tombs a-crack; and shaken out all at once
From mid-air, and directly neath the moon,
Meseems what hanging wing divides the light,
Like a black film of gloom, or thickest shadow;
But on the tombs there is no shadow!

FIRST WITCH:
Enough! Twill be a prosperous night, methinks,
For commerce of the demons with the dead;
And for us, too, when every omen's good,
And fraught with promise of a potent brew.

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