Explore "A Dirge" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Death and a dirge at midnight; / Yet never a soul in the house / Heard anything more than the throb and beat / Of a beautiful waltz of Strauss.
Dead, dead, dead, and staring, / With a ghastly smile on its face; / But the world saw only laughing eyes / And roses, and billows of lace.
Floating and whirling together, / Into the beautiful night, / How little you dreamed of the ghastly thing / I was hiding away from your sight.
Meeting your dark eyes' splendour, / Feeling your warm, sweet breath, / How could you know that my passionate heart / Had died a horrible death?
Died in its fever and fervour, / Died in its beautiful bloom; / And that waltz of Strauss was a funeral dirge, / Leading the way to the tomb.
But you held my hand at parting, / And I smiled back a gay good night; / And you never knew of the ghastly corpse / I was hiding away from your sight.
Yet whenever I hear the Danube -- / Under its pulsing strain, / I catch the wail of the funeral dirge, / And my heart dies over again.