About the skull, the sun's last glare
Encircled itself as a rosy wreath,
Coloring the skull, now bleak and bare,
Coloring the flesh, the chin beneath,
While through the skull the winds pranced in play
As if the dead man laughed his way.
Here and there fluttered in the air
On the skull long forgotten hair,
And dewy drops gleamed forth below
As if the skull's unseeing eyes,
Gazing where evening beauty lies,
Were moved to tears of mournful woe.
Thus sat I there, till the moonlight touched the peaks,
Rendering paler still the skull's and my own cheeks.
Its whiteness spreading out, as the whiteness of the snow,
Across the dale and woods, o'er mountains high and low.
From time to time, disturbed by a distant cuckoo's call
The sleeping dell awakes while the hooting owl resounds;
From out the nearby yards—dog's barkings rise and fall.
Around the arid knoll, a spicy scent abounds,
While spread about the mound, sleeps a fra-grant floweret;
On the distant lake, a light its mystic beams compounds,
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