Verlaine
14 lines✦
hy do you dig like long-clawed scavengersTo touch the covered corpse of him that fledThe uplands for the fens, and riotedLike a sick satyr with doom's worshippers?Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verseTo tell the story of the life he led.Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,And let the worms be its biographers. Song sloughs away the sin to find redressIn art's complete remembrance: nothing clingsFor long but laurel to the stricken browThat felt the Muse's finger; nothing lessThan hell's fulfilment of the end of thingsCan blot the star that shines on Paris now.
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