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<<Home <<Site Map <<Pentrich Records <<Story of a Revolution >>The Three Graves |
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‘The Three Graves’ by Charles Lamb |
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Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds, |
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Where Bedloe, Oates and Judas, hide their heads, |
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I saw great Satan like a Sexton stand, |
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With his intolerable spade in hand, |
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Digging three graves. Of coffin shape they were, |
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For those who, coffinless, must enter there |
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With unblest rites. The shrouds were of that cloth |
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Which Clotho weaveth in her blackest wrath; |
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The dismal tinct oppress'd the eye, that dwelt |
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Upon it long, like darkness to be felt. |
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The pillows to these baleful beds were toads, |
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Large, living, livid, melancholy loads, |
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Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size |
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Crawl'd round; and one upcoil'd, which never dies. |
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A doleful bell, inculcating despair, |
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Was always ringing in the heavy air. |
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And all about the detestable pit |
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Strange headless ghosts, and quarter'd forms, did flit; |
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Rivers of blood, from living traitors spilt, |
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by treachery stung from poverty to guilt. |
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I ask'd the fiend, for whom these rites were meant? |
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"These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is spent, |
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When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bedwards, |
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I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards." |
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