Page:Poems - Southey (1799) volume 2.djvu/59

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So Saying on they past, and now arrivedWhere such a hideous ghastly groupe abode,That the Maid gazed with half-averting eye,And shudder'd: each one was a loathly corpse,The worm did banquet on his putrid prey,Yet had they life and feeling exquisiteTho' motionless and mute."Most wretched menAre these," the angel cried. "These, JOAN, are bards,Whose loose lascivious lays perpetuateWho sat them down, deliberately lewd,So to awake and pamper lust in mindsUnborn; and therefore foul of body nowAs then they were of soul, they here abideLong as the evil works they left on earthShall live to taint mankind. A dreadful doom!Yet amply merited by that bad manWho prostitutes the sacred gift of song!
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