Gone the saturnalia sighing, dying, Shone the leaves' regalia, maddened with the flying Hooves, the glittering leaves seem Faces in a dim dream, Satyrine the leaves gleam At the dreams of dying. Pierrot's mask is whitened, Long-nosed frightened; Rags tragi-comical, Flags plano-conical, Tags histrionical, All histrionical, Form acronomical Falls - lies sprawling. Cannibal, the sun, blared down upon the shrunken Heads, the drums of skin, the sin - The dead men drunken, Through the canvas slum come Bunches of taut nerves, dance, Caper through the slum, prance Like paper blowing. Lying in the deep mud under tumbrils rolling, The dead men drunken, tossed and lost, and sprawling The trumpets calling From Hell's pits falling The crowd seas tumble And Death's drums rumble. White as a winding sheet, Masks blowing down the street: Moscow, Paris London, Vienna- all are undone. The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling , Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, The world's floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.
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Composition:
- Set to music by William Walton (1902 - 1983), "The last gallop", from Façade
Text Authorship:
- by Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964), appears in Façade, first published 1922
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Researcher for this page: Dan Eggleston
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 40
Word count: 159