Poets Have Chanted Mortality

It had better been hidden

    But the Poets inform:

We are chattel and liege

    Of an undying Worm.

Were you, Will, disheartened,

    When all Stratford’s gentry

Left their Queen and took service

    In his low-lying country?

How many white cities

    And grey fleets on the storm

Have proud-builded, hard-battled,

    For this undying Worm?

Was a sweet chaste lady

    Would none of her lover.

Nay, here comes the Lewd One,

    Creeps under her cover!

Have ye said there’s no deathless

     Of face, fashion, form,

Forgetting to honor

     The extent of the Worm?

O ye laughers and light-lipped,

    Ye faithless, infirm,

I can tell you who’s constant,

    ’Tis the Eminent Worm.

Ye shall trip on no limits,

    Neither time ye your term,

In the realms of His Absolute

    Highness the Worm.