Epistle No.81-While Heaven Wept

Mark how our shadow, Mark Movits, mon frere One small darkness encloses How gold and purple that shovel there To rags and rubbish disposes Charon beckons from tumultuous waves Then trice this ancient digger of graves For thee ne'er grapeskin shall glister Wherefore my Movits come help me to raise A gravestone over our sister Even desirous and modest abode Under the sighing branches Where time and death, a marriage forebode Twixt beauty and ugliness ashes To thee ne'er jealousy findeth her way Nor happiness footstep, swift to stray Flitteth amid these barrows E'en enmity armed, as thou seest this day Piously breaketh her arrow The little bell echoes the great bells groan Robed in the door the precentor Noisome with quirsters prayerful moan Blesses those who enter The way to this templed city of tombs Climbs amid roses yellowing blooms Fragments of mouldering biers Till black-clad each mourner his station assumes Bows there deeply in tears