There’s a blank sheet of paper before me,
It’s as blank as our lives have become,
But nothing’s been said, though the passion is dead,
We still make believe we are one.
And the days seem to drift on forever
In this mist that I call ‘No Man’s Land,’
Whatever I say, you’ll be looking away
And you never reach out for my hand.

We eat all our meals in a silence
And pretend we enjoy it that way,
I reach for the newspaper, you for a book
So our eyes never meet in dismay.
Where there once was a ripple of laughter
As your foot rubbed inside of my leg,
Your lips are now pursed in a silence that’s cursed
And I feel that you want me to beg.

We shop, as if we are together,
And we smile when we see our old friends,
But friendship is rare, as our friends couldn’t bear
To watch as this partnership ends.
They can sense all that distance between us,
And note that our smiles are grim,
We never accept invitations,
Unless they’re for ‘her’ or for ‘him’.

Now you’re suddenly working long hours
At the bookshop, when you feel disposed,
Though I’ve wandered at night in the market,
And noticed, the bookshop is closed.
Then you wander back in about midnight,
And go on straight up to your room,
You’re taking your showers at the strangest of hours
While I sit downstairs in the gloom.

So now that I’ve put it on paper,
I shall leave this brief note by your bed,
It might shine a light on our silences,
The issues that should have been said.
I know you’ll be happier once I’ve gone
So I’m catching the midnight train,
I want you to know that I loved you once,
But that love has now turned, to pain!

David Lewis Paget

The little boy with the shining eyes
Was skipping along the street,
They said that he was autistic, that
He never would learn to speak,
He laughed and played in the open air
And he chattered away inside,
But he couldn’t utter a single word
That anyone recognised.

His mind was cluttered with happy thoughts
Of colours and sounds and things,
He couldn’t make sense of the what-they-were
Or anyone’s utterings,
He thought they spoke in a special tongue
That nobody understood,
They kept on saying the same old thing,
‘Now Oliver, you be good!’

He thought that ‘Ubble ee yuli dood,’
Was the sound of a creaking chair,
Or maybe the voice of a ‘Wotsigot’
When his mother was tearing her hair,
His father would just say ‘Geepimin’
When he wanted to go out late,
And she’d say, ‘Wotdid yalass slayv dyeov?’
Locking the garden gate.

He’d learned to scale the iron fence
That was built to keep him in,
And he took his chattering Umblevorks
That were gambolling within,
He filled the street with his Landyplatts
Where they lay on every lawn,
Waiting to play with the neighbour’s cats
That he knew as Gratzendorn.

But down the road was a nasty man
With a name like Hubbrygast,
Who would grab the lad by the scruff of the neck
And drag him home at last,
‘Keep your idiot son at home,
Away from my place, at least,
If I catch him out on the road again
I’ll be calling the local police.’

The day was Doodly Wangle with
The Flubber up in the Guy,
When Hubbrygast saw a Landyplatt
From the corner of his eye,
The boy was singing a Wollygong
To a two-tone Grindlepick,
When Hubbrygast poked the Landyplatt
With the sharp point of a stick.

The Landyplatt gave a gorble that
Had enraged the Umblevorks,
And Hubbrygast was surrounded by
His own sharp garden forks,
They poked and prodded and brought him down
‘Til the nasty man had bled,
While a bright red volluping Corple
With a *****, took off his head.

The people hide in their houses when
The boy comes out to play,
And nobody tries to speak to him,
They wouldn’t know what to say,
They weave their way through the Landyplatts
That have taken over the street,
And try to avoid the Umblevorks
That chatter, under their feet.

David Lewis Paget

The Moon was rising, over the hill
Along with the evening star,
They lit the lane he was walking, ‘til
He could see the lights of a car,
They were headed up in the narrow lane
So he had to jump out wide,
Then it hurtled over the flowing rill,
Rolled, and lay on its side.

He stood in shock for a moment there
Then ran to do what he could,
But flames burst out of the tangled wreck
At the edge of McNalty’s Wood.
He heard a woman, screaming in pain
Who was trapped inside the car,
But the tank blew up, as he knew it would
So he watched it, from afar.

The door on top of the wreck flew up
As the air began to scorch,
The woman climbed from the burning wreck
But was lit like a flaming torch,
She stood engulfed for a moment there
As the flames devoured her hair,
And screamed, ‘I’m coming to get you, John,
In the dead of the night, beware!’

Then all he saw was a staring skull
As the flesh peeled off the bone,
The body shuddered, and then collapsed
As he turned, and ran for home.
His heart was pounding a steady beat
As he ran, and stumbled there,
The voice that rang in his ears was shrill,
‘In the dead of the night, beware!’

He knew the woman, he knew the car
And a terror entered his soul,
He’d left her stood at the altar, while
He hid in his coward’s hole,
He’d packed his bag, and travelling things
While her father stood at the door,
Loading a pair of cartridges
And sworn to even the score.

He’d left the town in the dead of night
Had driven a hundred miles,
Buried himself in the countryside
In a shack called ‘Seven Dials’.
There were seven clocks in the tiny shack
That would tick and tock in turn,
They each were named for a crying shame
And the seventh clock was ‘Burn.’

The first was named ‘Disloyalty’
And the second ‘Coward’s Toll’,
The third had hands but a vacant face
And its name was ‘Empty Soul.’
The fourth had written across its face
A single wording, ‘Scare!’
The fifth was draped in a veil of lace
With the only word, ‘Despair.’

He thought of stopping the ticking clocks
But they ticked on through the night,
He’d wake up drenched in a sweat, and when
He rose, his face was white,
The sixth clock hung in the kitchen, was
The only clock to chime,
But then would lock, the ticking stop
While the name said, ‘Out of time!’

He lay low after the burning car
Would not go out for a week,
He locked the doors and the windows,
Every night, but took a peek,
The world outside by the darkened wood
Was a place to chill and scare,
The wind would whisper among the trees,
‘In the dead of the night, beware!’

A month went by, they buried the corpse
That they found by the burnt out car,
He thought he’d beaten the woman’s curse
So he left the door ajar,
A gale blew up and it swung the door
Out wide in the dead of night,
And a shape appeared in the doorway
As he woke in a sudden fright.

She seemed to shimmer while standing there
In a charred silk wedding dress,
‘You didn’t think you’d escape me now
That you’ve left me such a mess,’
A breeze had lifted her veil by then
There was just a moment’s lull,
Then he stared at her and she stared right back
From a charred and blackened skull.

He screamed as only a man can scream
When the terror eats his soul,
A flame burst out of the wedding dress
And devoured the woman whole,
The shack went up and the ticking stopped
Of the first six dials in turn,
But above the crackle of flames he heard
That last clock ticking, ‘Burn!’

David Lewis Paget

‘Just where do you think you’re going, girl
With those ribbons in your hair?’
‘I’m off to the world of Make Believe
To the Hart Midsummer Fair.
They say there’s a Magical Fairy Ring
Where the maids dance round a pole,
Where the step of a dainty pair of feet
Can win you a *** of gold.’

‘There’s Lords and Ladies and Dukes and Kings
Come down from the Castle Kragg,
Wearing their Crowns and jewels and rings
And they roast a new killed Stag,
There are clowns and jugglers, Gypsy bands
And the Phantom Fiddler’s there,
Playing an ancient Irish jig
At the Hart Midsummer Fair.’

‘The gentlemen from the town come down
All dressed in their best array,
Looking to win a country maid
To hang off their arm that day.
And those as willing, the auctioneer
Takes maids from the countryside,
Bangs his gavel and calls the odds
For the sale of a country bride.’

‘I’ll not have you at the County fair,
You can stay at the farm by me,
We’ve been affianced for over a year
And wed in a year, we’ll see!’
‘I’ve waited long for your promise to wed
But nothing has come about,
I’ll not be wed to an Ostler, when
A gentleman calls me out.’

He locked the maid in the pantry, so
She wouldn’t get out that day,
But she slipped the lock, and changed her dress
And managed to get away.
She went the way of the hidden lane
On the old grey dappled mare,
And rode on over the hills to find
The Hart Midsummer Fair.

She was late for the clowns and jugglers
She was late for the Fairy Ring,
She wasn’t too late for the auctioneer
Who told her to come right in.
She couldn’t see who was bidding for her
But she took it with a smile,
It must have been some fine gentleman
For the bidding was done in style.

‘Four pounds I’m bid, for this comely *****,
Four guineas to you out there,’
Another pound brought his gavel down
‘I believe that you’ve won her, sir!’
They tied a blindfold over her eyes
And her wrists were bound with cords,
She had to walk for a dozen miles
Tethered behind a horse.

The horse’s hooves had a hollow ring
As they hit the cobblestones,
The walls were damp and the air was filled
With a smell like drying bones.
Her ‘gentleman’ took the blindfold off
And her knees began to sag,
She’d sold herself to the Pantler of
The household, Castle Kragg.

The Pantler, so very old and grey
With a blind, white staring eye,
He said that she’d be the scullery maid
There were pots and pans to dry,
There wasn’t a single window in
The kitchen, down below,
She ****** the money he’d paid for her
And she begged him, let her go.

‘That’s not enough,’ said the wily serf,
‘To free you from these grounds,
If you want to purchase your liberty
It will cost you twenty pounds.
Your value is in the work you’ll do
Both here, and under the stairs,
If you pay your shilling a week to me
It will take you seven years!’

That night she slept on a pile of sacks
And she ****** the man away,
She said, ‘You’re not going to touch me
For as long as you make me pay!’
But late that night in the pale moonlight
A horse’s hooves were heard,
And a shadow crept to her bedside,
Whispered, ‘Don’t say a single word!’

He led her up to the courtyard where
There stood the dapple grey,
Hoisted her up behind him, spurred
The horse, ‘Now let’s away!’
She clung on tight to the Ostler she
Had spurned, without a care,
And laughed when they crested the hillside
As the breeze blew through her hair.

The banns went up the following day
They were married in the fall,
She said, ‘I finally got my way,’
And he answered, ‘Not at all!
‘You only married an Ostler, not
The Pantler under the stair.’
‘An Ostler’s all that I wanted since
The Hart Midsummer Fair!’

David Lewis Paget

Her skin was dark and her hair was black,
She walked with a Spanish sway,
‘She could be from South America,’
I would hear the neighbours say,
She’d taken the cottage in Ansley Court,
Put seagrass mat on the floor,
Then given them something to talk about
With the shingle she hung on the door.

‘A Course is starting on Wednesday week
For the women of Risdon Vale,
“The Secret Rites of the Shuar Revealed,”
(For ladies alone - No Male!)
The art of centuries, hidden ‘til now
Will be taught in a matter of weeks,
Be among the first to learn of these skills,
(At just sixty dollars, each!)’

Said one, ‘It’s probably just a scam,
For what could she have to show?’
‘This village is such a bore,’ said Pam,
‘I’d pay to see rushes grow!’
But curiosity killed the cat
They say, in that wise old saw,
And half the women of Risdon Vale
Turned up to the stranger’s door.

She took the women, one at a time
Examined each one alone,
Then chose just six to make up the course
And sent all the others home.
She’d weeded out all the gossipers,
And the ones that were loose of tongue,
Had sworn to secrecy those she chose
At an altar with candles on.

Not one of the chosen ones would speak,
Not one of them say a word,
They hung together in whispered cliques
And wouldn’t be overheard.
Their husbands too, were kept in the dark
When asked, they would heave a sigh,
Shrug their shoulders, and raise a brow
Though everyone wondered, ‘Why?’

Ted Wilkins wasn’t impressed by this
And took himself to the pub,
‘I don’t like secrets,’ he told his mates,
Then left to head for the scrub.
They said he’d gone with Emily Bates,
They’d been having it off for years,
‘Her cottage is suddenly empty too,’
Said the wags in ‘The Bullock’s Curse.’

There wasn’t a tear in the Wilkins home,
She seemed to be quite relieved,
‘I always thought that she must have known,’
So half of the Vale believed,
A woman alone is a tidy mark
For a man like Michael Stout,
They saw him creep to her house one night,
But no-one saw him come out.

The tongues were wagging in Risdon Vale
About ‘funny goings-on,’
‘The preacher hasn’t been seen at church
Since that spat with Lucy Chong,’
Then Red Redoubt who had beat his wife
Took off, when he knew the score,
For Gwen had bid him ‘good riddance’ when
He was heading on out the door.

The women met on a Wednesday night
And they burned a light ‘til dawn,
‘What do you think they do in there?’
Said the gossip, Betty Spawn,
She crept up close to the house one night
And peered at the light within,
So Pam came out and surprised her there,
Said, ‘Why don’t you come right in!’

The six week course was almost done
When the police came round one night,
Kicked the door of the cottage in,
Gave the girls a terrible fright.
‘We need to know what you’re doing here,
There are rumours, round about,’
But the woman from South America
In the dark, had slipped on out.

There were pots and pans and cooking things
And a smell of something stale,
‘We’ve been learning all these secret things
But we can’t tell you, you’re male!’
Then a cry came out from another room
From a lad in the local police,
He said, ‘There’s six new shrunken heads
Out here on the mantelpiece!’

David Lewis Paget

The birds are twittering in the trees
That stand outside my door,
There’s only a pale grey dawning light
‘Til the sun comes up once more,
The clouds are scudding across the sky
In an early sign of rain,
While the one I love went out last night
And never came back again.

She said she’d only be gone an hour
That she had to see the priest,
Her husband’s funeral’s coming up
And she owes him that, at least,
She went to purchase a single plot
So she took my leather purse,
To see what coffins the maker’s got
And arrange a horse-drawn hearse.

She only married a year ago
And her heart is fit to break,
She cried all night when she told me how
It was all a huge mistake,
‘I should have married for love,’ she said,
‘Then I would have married you,
But I let his money go to my head,
So what is a girl to do?’

We talked and talked through the early hours,
We talked and talked for a week,
She came unbid to my poster bed
Lay naked under the sheet,
She said she never had tasted love
As sweet as the love I gave,
But I was thinking her husband dead
And soon to go to his grave.

‘You really shouldn’t be seen with me
‘Til he’s safely in the ground,
It wouldn’t be right, the folks would say,’
But Elizabeth just frowned.
‘A love like this could never be wrong,
Let the gossip-mongers sneer,
I haven’t felt so much love as this
For the best part of a year.’

I said, ‘It must have been terrible
To be losing him so young,’
And caught a glimpse of a glistening tear
As she put her make-up on,
‘It goes to show how life can go
In the twinkling of an eye,’
She held my hands, gazed into my eyes,
And let out a heartfelt sigh.

She came back late in the afternoon
With a bundle of receipts,
‘It’s all arranged, we can get engaged
In a month from Tuesday week.
I told him that you had slept with me
And you should have heard him roar,
You’d better wait in the hallway while
He’s beating down your door!’

My jaw had dropped and my face was white
As I tried to take it in,
‘I thought you told me that he was dead,
Before we indulged in sin!’
‘He will be soon if you stand and wait
And you want me in your bed,
I borrowed the blacksmith’s hammer for you
To hit him across the head!’

David Lewis Paget

The tree was the lord of the neighbourhood
For it looked down over all,
Grown on a hill by a sparkling rill
It blossomed from Spring to Fall,
Its vibrant life flowed up from its roots
And broadcast through its leaves,
The warmth of a wise old autocrat
As it nestled into the eaves.

The tree had been there before the house
For a hundred years or so,
The builders wanted to cut it down
But the owner answered, ‘No!
There’s something magic about that tree
And I fear, if its timber falls,
The house you build will be cursed, you see,
I’ll be left with cold stone walls.’

The house changed hands as its owners died
But the tree grew on apace,
The other trees in the valley there
Were humbled by its grace,
Its topmost branch you could see for miles
It was marked on many a map,
They said, ‘Look out for the giant tree
On the hill by Calder’s Gap.’

The house was sold to a man called Binns,
A miserable kind of man,
They said he’d framed the dollar he’d earned
As a boy, while shifting sand,
But wealth had sharpened his temper, he
Was rude, to one and all,
The locals whispered behind their hands,
‘He’s headed for a fall.’

He looked from his bedroom window, and
He said, ‘I hate that tree!
It hides the view of the countryside,
The view that I paid to see.
You mark my words, it’s coming down,
It scrapes my window pane,
And wakes me up in the dead of night
It’ll go by the winter’s rain.’

The branches stroked on the window frame,
The frame was made of wood,
And passed to the tree its tale of shame
The tone of the owner’s mood,
The tree had shuddered, sent waves of pain
Abroad in the midnight air,
Like a cry of help, and its one refrain
Was, ‘Cut me, if you dare!’

The mile-a-minute responded first
Entwined and blocked the door,
Invaded the little garden shed
Where the axe lay on the floor,
It grew incredibly, overnight
As a shield around the tree,
To say, if a vine could really speak,
‘You’ll have to get through me!’

But Binns crawled out through a window,
Red of face and fighting mad,
‘What’s going on with this garden,
Where’s the gardener I had?
He went and got a machete, and
He slashed away at the vine,
Freed the door of its tendrils, and
The shed, in double time.

He found the axe on the earthen floor
And he took it to the tree,
‘You may have stood for a hundred years,
Now you’ll have to deal with me!’
He swung it once and the handle cracked
And splintered up his arm,
There wasn’t anything made of wood
That would do the old tree harm.

The splinter entered a major vein
And his blood dripped on the ground,
Apart from his scream and a sudden hush
There was just one other sound,
A violent cracking above his head
As a tree branch came away,
That hurtled down like a spear, and pinned
His heart to the ground that day.

The tree still towers above the rest
And sways in the slightest breeze,
It stands as a lord of the countryside
For it brought a man to his knees.
The house is ruined, a few stone walls
Still stand, and the curtains flap,
For nobody’s game to build again
Near the Tree by Calder’s Gap!

David Lewis Paget

I’d driven along the cobbled street
And along to the village square,
When something had caught my attention, and
It was then I became aware,
I’d had vague thoughts of another life
That I’d lived in the distant past,
Was there something locked in my memory
That would tell me the truth, at last?

I didn’t remember who I was
My name, or even my face,
For five long years I’d hunted and searched
For a clue, a familiar place,
My life ‘til then was a total blank
I’d found myself by the sea,
Crawling up out of the water there
Was the first that I knew of me.

The war was just about over, and
Confusion had reigned supreme,
So much rubble and people dead
I couldn’t remember a thing,
The place I’d lived may well have been bombed,
I wandered the empty streets,
Of buildings, shattered to empty shells
Of craters, seven feet deep.

I found some clothes in a rubbled shop
For my own had been torn from my back,
There were burns all over my body,
Had I been caught in an air attack?
I went to the local hospital
Where the staff had treated my burns,
But they said they didn’t know who I was
So I left, and never returned.

I did odd jobs and I found a room
And I bought the News each day,
I checked the names on the missing lists
In the hopes I’d be found one day,
But I never saw a familiar face
Nor read a familiar name,
I’d given up when I drove on through
The village called Hamlin Dane.

I parked the car, next to the square
Where a cottage had caught my eye,
My heart was beating, loud in my chest
Though I stood and I wondered why,
Then a woman walked on out to the street
There was something familiar there,
She looked across and she caught my eye,
Then stopped and began to stare.

She walked, then ran right up to my side,
And then she began to cry,
‘My God, it’s you, just where have you been,’
Then stopped, and let out a sigh.
‘For five long years we thought you were dead,
So why have you come back now?’
I shook my head with a sense of dread,
I wanted to tell, but how?

Then fleeting visions came into my mind
Of a warm and a cosy hearth,
A loving woman beside me there
And a child that we’d christened Garth.
I tried to tell her I’d lost my mind,
My memories stirred just then,
She shook her head, ‘I’d like to be kind,
But I’ve just got married again.’

Then I was aboard a Lancaster
Heading on home from a raid,
We’d bombed the city of Frankfurt, and
The turret was shot away,
We limped back over the channel, then
Were hit with a burst of flack,
The plane went down in a burst of flame,
And I thought we’d never get back.

I was the only survivor, that
I knew, as we hit the sea,
The others went down with the crippled plane,
They wouldn’t be looking for me,
I stared at Joan and began to cry,
The tears were wet on my cheek,
‘I’m sorry, darling, I don’t know why
But the future is looking bleak!’

There was a time when I’d lived a life
That I’d lost and I don’t know how,
A wife, a son, and they’d turned their backs
And I can’t really blame them now.
She said it was best if I left that place,
She was married again, for sure,
So I stayed a week then I drove away,
I can’t even blame the war.

It’s sixty years, I stare at the hearth,
I never got married again,
My life flew by in a stream of tears
Of what I had lost, back then,
My son found out and he looked me up,
He said he was sorry, and how,
I hugged him close and I bit my lip,
And said, ‘I’m living for now!’

David Lewis Paget

‘There were icicles hung from the window-sill
At dawn, when I thought to peep,
And the snow’s built up to the top of the door,
It must be six feet deep.’
Diane was shivering under her gown
When she crawled back into bed,
‘You’d better go out and fix it, Phil,’
‘Too late for that,’ I said.

I’d peered on out of the window and
The sun was shining bright,
The birds were twittering in the trees
Awake in the early light,
There wasn’t a sign of ice or snow
At the door, or window-sill,
I went to check on Diane, because
I thought that she must be ill.

She lay, still shivering in the bed
I thought that she had the ague,
‘The ice is deep in your soul,’ I said,
But her eyes were cold and vague,
‘The ice is there on the window ledge
And the snow is piled at the door,
Go out and clear it away for me
Before it spreads to the floor.’

I stopped to look at the mantelpiece
At the picture of our son,
She’d cut him off with never a word
For some trivial thing he’d done,
We hadn’t seen him for seven years
And he never phoned or called,
She’d not shed even a single tear
And for that, I was appalled.

‘The cold is eating my very bones
I can feel it creeping in,’
She seemed so suddenly old and grey
(There are several types of sin).
‘Will you not go out and shovel the snow
For the wife that you used to love?’
‘I would if the snow was at the door,
But the sun is bright above.’

‘You haven’t loved me for years,’ she said,
‘You never do what I want!’
‘Love is a two-way street,’ I said,
‘Not a one-way covenant.
Before we take, then we have to give
So the feeling is returned,
But you’ve locked yourself in your tiny soul
And you’ve left me feeling spurned.’

‘I give you what you deserve,’ she said
‘Since you let our daughter go,
You let her marry beneath her,
As I said, ‘I told you so!’
‘You made our daughter unhappy, by
Rejecting the one she loved,
You wouldn’t go to the wedding, so
She said that she’d had enough!’

‘The ice has formed on the ceiling now,
Why can’t you feel the cold?’
‘The ice and snow that you’re seeing is
The ice cave of your soul.’
‘I’ve hated you for many a year,’
She spat, and she said it twice,
‘That’s sad, for I’ve always loved you,’
I began, but her eyes were ice.

David Lewis Paget

‘We haven’t the money for bread, my love,
We haven’t the money for tea,
You’d best get dressed in your Sunday best
And go down to the docks for me.
There’s plenty of sailors round the town
Who have just come in from the sea,
They’ll spare five shillings a head, my love,
You only need two or three.’

So Rosalie went to the old wood chest,
To change, as she always did,
Slipped off her shabby old cotton dress
And shook, as she lifted the lid,
Her muslin dress was a shade of grey
That had come third hand from a sale,
Next to a whale-bone corset that
Laced up, made her face go pale.

They’d only been married the year before
When he’d sworn he would care for her,
But most of his money had gone on drink
And the Dollymops at the fair,
He never had kept enough for the rent
When the landlord came, to pay,
‘It’s time that we used what assets we have…’
He’d grinned, in that crooked way.

‘Make sure that you pull your bodice down,’
He said as he tightened her stays,
‘You need to be showing some cleavage, but
Make sure that the blighter pays!
Just leave your drawers on the bedroom floor
You’ll not be needing them there,
The quicker they’re in and out, my love,
The less that you’ll have to bare.’

They walked together along the street,
He to the Wayside Inn,
While she went on to the alleyways
That were always so dark and grim,
He’d wait for her ‘til she’d done the deed
Then she’d meet him back at the bar,
And hand whatever she’d earned out there
In the clutch of many a tar.

She’d steel herself and would go quite numb
At the thought of those clumsy hands,
The leering faces, the coarse remarks
For the rent, and a *** of jam.
The other women would glower at her
If she pitched too close to their stall,
Was pushed in alcoves and spread on bins
And stood, her back to the wall.

She would have left, but her folks were dead
So there wasn’t a place to go,
And he would have thrown her out in the street
If ever she’d whispered ‘No!’
London was full of the fallen ones
Who were shunned, as she would be,
For only a Madam would let her in
To be used, continually.

Her husband sat at the Wayside bar
‘Til it closed, and bundled him out,
With still no sign of his Rosalie
He was mad, and grim at the mouth.
He headed down to the alleyway
When he saw the bobbies there,
They were standing over a pile of rags
And a tangle of auburn hair.

‘You can’t come on, there’s a ****** done,’
Said the sergeant, raising his hand,
A croak came up from the pile of rags,
‘Oh dear, that’s my old man!’
She stirred and murmured before she died
Sunk deep in a bleak distress,
‘Oh John, I’m sorry, the sailor lied,
And the blood has ruined my dress!’

David Lewis Paget

He came unbidden one frosty night
To the village of Barkly Chase,
He didn’t look out of the ordinary
But carried a single case,
The empty cottage of Peggy Sykes
Had been rented once before,
The neighbours watched as the Wizard walked
Right up to the old front door.

‘He’s going in, it’s as sure as sin,’
Said the Widow Marx from her blinds,
‘I’ll tell old Mrs. McCafferty
He’ll be playing around with our minds.’
She’d heard a wizard was headed their way
From Jenny, the Witch of the Moor,
And had bought up seventeen toilet rolls
From Rafferty’s village store.

‘What would you want with seventeen rolls,’
Said Ethel McGurk with the gout,
‘I don’t, it’s part of my strategy,
I’m going to drive him out.
There isn’t a store in a couple of miles
And they’re not delivered ‘til June,
We’ll see how long he can go without
When he’s bursting his balloon.’

The women cackled with evil glee,
They thought it a perfect plan,
‘We’ll see how his spells will help him out
When he has to use his hand.’
‘He’ll not come near, I can tell you that,’
Said the ******, Hazel Pace,
‘If he so much looks, I will knock him flat,
I’ve got fifteen cans of mace.’

The Wizard stayed for a week, he did,
And never came out the door,
The week turned into a fortnight, and
He looked like staying for more.
‘He must have been constipated,’ said
The Widow Marx to her friend,
‘He probably had a roll in his case,’
Said the woman from Brissom End.

Excitement grew in the village square,
‘His washing’s out on the line,
I’d never have looked but I saw it flap,
It’s a most mysterious sign!’
They held their breath at the news from Beth:
‘There are demons all over his jocks,
And you wouldn’t credit the Wizard’s gall,
There are magic stripes on his socks!’

A month went by, and the women pried
At night when his lights were out,
They’d peer on in though his curtains,
Widow Marx and the one with gout.
‘He’s got himself a computer thing
Those ones that glow through the house,
And he’s keeping a little familiar there,
I heard him call it ‘The Mouse’.

They lifted their skirts in horror, and
The ****** had jumped on a chair,
‘Those magical mice are demon things
And they climb up everywhere.’
‘This Wizard’s going to be hard to crack,
I thought he’d be gone by now,
He has to be brewing a terrible spell,
We have to find out, but how?’

The Wizard went for a walk one night
When he thought to get some air,
And Hazel Pace jumped out of a tree,
Poured honey all through his hair,
The Widow Marx had a besom broom
And beat him over the head,
‘We know you’re plotting the village’s doom,
What about this, instead?’

The Wizard packed up his single case
And left the very next day,
All the women hung on the gate
And shouted ‘Hip hip, hooray!’
‘We beat the Wizard, we saw him off
With his spells and his little case!’
But they wonder why there isn’t a man
Within miles of Barkly Chase.

David Lewis Paget

I was sitting, deep in my study
Under a single desktop light,
Listening to the patter of rain
As I wrote, late in the night.
The other sound was the scrape of the nib
As it traced ink over the page,
A setting on out of the mood within
As I traced McMurtrey’s rage.

I often would write at night back then
For the house was dark and still,
With none of the interruptions that
The day would seek to fill,
So the world outside would fade from view
As the Moon came out to shine,
Then I could re-visit the world I knew
In the latest storyline.

Each tale I told from a birds-eye view
As I watched from my secret place,
A god’s perspective of what I knew
Of despair, or a saving grace,
My characters hung from puppet strings
That I dangled down from my pen,
And I teased and taunted with sufferings
In the way that I did, back then.

I never would share with the world outside
What happened within these walls,
Or open up to their prying eyes
My visions of haunted halls,
For that would take them into the light,
Out here where the world is real,
And men could see what a cruel pen
A storyteller reveals.

The night that I sat there, pondering
How to make McMurtrey fail,
He’d been obsessed with the girl Mei Ling
She was like his Holy Grail,
The storm outside was gathering
And the thunder brought more rain,
When after a lightning flash, I heard
A tap on the window pane.

It made me start, I must admit
My skin had begun to crawl,
I very slowly swivelled my chair
Around, aside to the wall,
I pulled the curtains apart just then
And I peered out into the night,
But the face that stared in back at me
Was stark in the pale moonlight.

I heard him say, vaguely, ‘Let me in!’
As the lightning flashed once more,
Despite myself, I got to my feet
Unlocking the outer door,
He strode on into the study, stood
In a stance, most threatening,
‘I’ve come in search of my lady love,
As you well would know - Mei Ling!’

The room had shimmered and shifted then
And it faded from my sight,
We stood in the Hall of Gordonstall
And I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’
The hall was hung with the tapestries
They’d brought from an old Crusade,
But nothing was real, I knew it then,
They were things that my pen had made.

‘Mei Ling’s betrothed to a Mandarin
And she wears his dragon ring,
The last I heard she was headed out
On her way back to Beijing.’
‘Then you’d better pull out your pen, old man,
Ensure that the lady stayed,
Or you’ll never get out of your mind again
While this storyline’s delayed.’

I wander the Hall of Gordonstall
And I see no way outside,
I hadn’t written the doorways in
And the walls are high and wide,
I need someone from the real world
To knock at my study door,
But I fear that I’ve lost myself inside,
As I pace the flagstone floor.

David Lewis Paget

The toddler sat in the high chair,
And stared at his tiny hands,
He wondered, where had they come from,
And his name, they said, was Hans,
He seemed to recall another place
Where he’d lived, so long ago,
Before he was part of the human race
Though the words, he didn’t know.

His body felt like an alien
It was hard to make it work,
His legs and his feet were clumsy, and
He’d only just learnt to walk,
He found that his hands could pick up things
He could drop them, or could throw,
And watch the reaction of bigger things
When they’d shout, or tell him ‘No!’

They both were bigger and stronger
But the biggest one was rough,
He’d lift him out of his high chair, and
His voice was deep and gruff,
The other was soft and caring and
Had fed him at the breast,
Would carry him round and cuddle him
But the voice was shrill, at best.

Two spirits sat on his shoulders that
He didn’t know that he had,
One kept muttering, ‘You be good!’
The other said, ‘Be bad!’
‘Don’t listen to him, he’s always grim,’
Said the good one on the right,
The other had said, ‘Remember me?
He’ll make you feel uptight!’

He vaguely remembered the darker one
From the place that he’d always been,
And thoughts went fluttering through his mind,
Like scenes in a distant dream,
He knew, as a thrill spilled over him
That the good one made him sad,
And he couldn’t listen to both at once
But the dark one made him glad.

He’d watch as the bigs lit cigarettes
And the room filled up with smoke,
The haze had returned to comfort him
Though once in a while, he’d choke.
He’d stare and stare at the cigarettes
Intent on that tiny glow,
For it lit a spark in his memory
And he suddenly thought, ‘I know!’

One night while the bigs were fast asleep
He crawled on out of his cot,
Went for the box of matches that
He’d seen them use, a lot.
His tiny fingers had struck a match
And he sat and watched the flame,
As the darker one on his shoulder said,
‘We’re going to play a game!’

He struck a match for the curtains, and
He struck a match for the couch,
He then set fire to the tablecloth
And burnt his thumb, said ‘Ouch!’
An ancient memory stirred within
That would make his face perspire,
Caught in the middle of Dresden once,
And sat in a lake of fire.

The big ones woke, began to choke
And rushed on out to their fate,
They tried to rescue the baby Hans
But for all of them, too late!
He sat and chuckled within the flames
Felt nothing inside his pyre,
The dark one said, ‘So much for games,
You’ve had your play in the fire!’

David Lewis Paget

Jack Cornwell was a Boy, First Class
On the Chester’s forward gun,
There to relay the settings with
A pair of headphones on,
He’d turned sixteen just months before
Was trained for his chosen task,
And hoped for a life of adventure as
He sailed, before the mast.

The Chester sailed to join the Fleet
That had left from Scapa Flow,
The Grand Fleet with its battleships
Sailed under Jellicoe,
They’d intercepted the German codes
And knew that they’d put to sea,
Hoping to split the British Fleet
And gain a victory.

The Chester turned to meet the flash
Of gunfire, far away,
The light was poor before the dawn
And the mist was thick that day,
Three funnels of a German ship
Came gliding through the mist,
And the Chester turned to starboard
Ready to show the British fist.

But the German ship was not alone
And the shells began to rain,
From the following battle cruisers
Shattering decks, in blood and pain,
Jack Cornwell stood at his post while all
His gun crew lay there dead,
Ready to take his orders, though
The Chester turned, and fled.

The medics found him with shrapnel wounds
Steel splinters in his chest,
He wouldn’t desert his post, he was
As brave as all the rest,
The Chester sailed for Immingham
Disembarked the wounded crew,
Put Jack in Grimsby Hospital,
There was nothing they could do.

He died just two days afterwards
Before his mother came,
She’d hurried on up from London
Where she’d caught the fastest train,
They buried Jack in a communal grave
So many men had died,
Fighting for King and country
Steeped in duty, worth and pride.

His name was honoured from lip to lip
How he’d stood beside his gun,
Determined to fight the German ships
‘Til the Chester turned to run,
Such courage born of England
Where it was tempered at the forge,
Was so inspiring in one so young
Said the Navy, to King George.

‘For shame,’ then cried the ‘Daily Sketch’
When they heard of the communal grave,
‘Is this how we treat our heroes,
Jack deserves the nation’s praise!’
The coffin was shortly disinterred
And draped with the Union Jack,
Drawn on an open gun carriage
With the Navy at its back.

His name went down in the history books
As the boy who stuck to his post,
In the midst of dead and dying men
As they made their way to the coast,
King George conferred the highest award
That there was, for bravery,
Awarded him the Victoria Cross,
Jack Cornwell, Boy, V.C.

David Lewis Paget

I took a room on the second floor
Of a building lost in time,
Nobody knew just when it was built
By way of its weird design.
It once had stood on an acreage
Of woods, and lakes and sky,
But now it stood in a fifth rate slum
And the world had passed it by.

Its red-brick frontage streaked with soot,
Its columns black with grime,
The marble floor with ancient foot
Was scored, and past its prime,
But any roof was a comfort then
For my life had lost its way,
And I couldn’t face the future then,
Nor yet, the light of day.

The janitor was an ugly man
And he had but one good eye,
He’d only let to the down-and-outs
And tramps that were passing by,
He made the rules for the ancient place
And he said, ‘Just you beware,
Don’t ever go to the back of the house
Or use the winding stair.’

He knew I’d agree to anything
For I had nowhere to go,
Since ever my wife had turned me out
For a butcher, name of Joe.
The years we’d spent were meaningless
Once she’d set her sights on him,
So I left without a word or a prayer
But kept my feelings in.

Up above was another floor
That was empty all the time,
The janitor said, ‘it’s not in use,
It’s just too hard to climb.’
And above that floor was another room
With the windows painted black,
And accessed by the winding stair
I’d been warned about, out back.

It was lonely there on the second floor
It was quiet as the tomb,
I got to wondering what was there
Upstairs in the topmost room,
There were noises, scuffles and fumblings,
At times in the early hours,
But when I asked the janitor why,
All that I got were glowers.

‘This house has plenty of secrets but
It keeps them to itself,
As you’d be better to keep to yours,
Rather than dig and delve,
I trust that you’ll never get the urge
To leave the second floor,
If ever I catch you out, my friend
I’ll see you out the door.’

His threats were making me curious
So I listened, quite intent,
At two or three in the morning when
Some noise was evident,
I climbed one night to the floor above
And I saw the winding stair,
And what was coming and going sent
A shock through my greying hair.

There were figures in shiny silver suits
Came in and out from the street,
Carrying cats and rats and dogs
Like specimens, all asleep,
And a terrible growl from the topmost room
Rang out when they opened the door,
And sent a shiver like ice along
My spine, from the upper floor.

And down the stairway creatures came
That I’d only seen in books,
Handed to strangers down below
With a nod, or merely a look,
They’d been extinct for a million years
Or had in the books I’d read,
But not a one of them lived or breathed,
They seemed to be newly dead.

I got back down to my room again
Shivered, and closed the door,
Sat in a quivering heap of dread
But I knew that I wanted more,
They must have come from a future time
And delved way into the past,
Why would they want our cats and dogs,
Had they lost their own, at last?

I went again on succeeding nights
The traffic was still the same,
For men of science and drunken girls
And still the strangers came,
But then a bellow from in that room
And a crunching, crashing sound,
With voices raised in the midnight gloom,
The janitor came, and frowned.

‘You’ve seen too much, now you’ll have to stay,’
He growled, and pointed a gun,
Prodded me up the winding stair
‘Til we saw what was going on,
The door to the topmost room was blocked
By an animal, tightly jammed,
‘My god, we’ll have to get out of here,
This never was part of the plan.’

Two giant tusks blocked the winding stair
As I looked in its evil eye,
Its head and shoulders had blocked the door
With no way of getting by,
It let out a giant trumpet blast
Of pain, as I turned to run,
This was no elephant, that I knew,
But a giant Mastodon.

Then up above was a steady whine
Like a jet that was winding up,
‘Don’t leave me here,’ cried the janitor,
‘I have to get back, just stop!’
But the roof of the house was lifting up
And the bricks were falling away,
I caught a glimpse of a saucer shape
As this thing took off that day.

The winding stair came crashing down
With nothing to stop its fall,
I landed down in the basement, found
Myself by a Roman wall,
The janitor, not so fortunate
Was crushed by the falling beast,
Killed by a thing, so long extinct,
By a million years, at least.

I didn’t wait for the powers that be
But took myself on the road,
Looking for somewhere else to stay
To hide away from the cold,
I found me a mansion, streaked with soot
With its columns, black with grime,
And thought, as I took a second look,
It seemed to be lost in time!

David Lewis Paget

‘There has to be something more than this,’
She said, with a thoughtful frown,
Standing over the farmhouse sink
And the dishes, looking down,
Her brother was out in the milking shed
And her mother had gone away,
They hadn’t seen her in fifteen years
But thought of her, every day.

They’d both grown up in the countryside
Secure on their father’s farm,
Had walked the mile to the little school
By way of Maltraver’s barn,
The air was pure and the nights were clear
They could see way up to the stars,
And Jessie would watch as the moon appeared
While her brother would stare at Mars.

They had their chores as they grew, of course,
For Adam would milk the cows,
While she would carry the bucket down
To feed the pigs and the sows,
There was fencing, drenching, ditching too
There was never a moment spare,
But Jessie fretted for something new
In the way of the world out there.

The father died in the Autumn time
And left the farm to his son,
‘Jessie will marry and move away
The way that it’s always done.’
She packed her bags when she turned eighteen
And she caught the bus to town,
She told her brother she’d keep in touch
But Adam was feeling down.

‘We’ve always been together,’ he said,
‘And now you’re going to roam,
When you get sick of the city lights
You can always come back home.’
‘I’m bored,’ she said, ‘with the simple life,
I’m going to have some fun,
She kissed him as she got on the bus,
Said, ‘Sorry, I have to run!’

She rented a small apartment with
Some money her father left,
And worked in Haile’s Department Store
In the basement, wrapping gifts,
She gradually met the bright young things
That hung in the clubs and bars,
Dangling chains and cheap gold rings
And high as the planet Mars.

‘It’s a totally different world out here,’
She wrote on home to the farm,
‘The place that they hold the dancing here
They call it ‘The City Barn!’
It’s full of strobes and coloured lights
And the music’s wild and free,
You’ll have to come to the city, bro
And I’ll take you out with me.’

Adam finally drove to town
In the farm’s old battered ute,
He took a shirt that he’d newly pressed
And his only ******* up suit,
He knocked on Jessie’s apartment door
And a Goth had let him in,
The place was full of the hoi poloi
And he couldn’t hear a thing.

The thumping rhythm would drown him out
And it made him feel a fool,
His sister gave him a little pill,
Said, ‘take it bro, it’s cool!’
He shook his head and he dumped the pill
In a *** plant on a stand,
Said, ‘Jess, you’d better get out of here,
This crowd will see you ******!’

‘I’ve never heard anyone talk so slow,’
Said the Goth with the purple hair,
‘Your bro’s a little bit slow as well,
Are they all like that, out there?’
One night was all that it took, and Jess
Was pushing him out the door,
‘You’d better get back where you belong
Or I’ll die of shame,’ she swore.

It took all night in the battered ute
‘Til he reached the open plains,
Shook off the stench of corruption
In the first life giving rains,
The city lights in his mirror had
Receded to just a glow,
When the stars came out in a country night
That the city would never know.

And Jess, back there with her new-found friends
Was dizzy up on the heights,
They fed her chemicals, liquid dreams
And they tricked her into flight,
‘There has to be something more than this,’
The last thought that she’d got,
While Adam had smiled at the countryside
And said to himself, ‘There’s not!’

David Lewis Paget

He picked up the faded diary
That had lain in his mother’s chest,
Along with a host of her recipes
That she’d saved in her little nest,
He’d just come straight from her fading eyes
When she’d, fraught, reached out for his hand,
‘Don’t ever believe, for the eyes deceive
What a moment of madness penned.’

‘There are things you never should read, my son,
There are things that you shouldn’t know,
For life is a series of scenes and dreams
Like you see in a picture show,
There is love, distress, and bitterness
That has nothing to do with you,
So promise me that you’ll burn the book,
That you won’t read a page or two.’

He nodded his head at the coming grief
As the tears welled up at his eyes,
And her hand went slack, with pure relief
At the last of her offspring’s lies.
She stared intent for a moment then
To capture the much loved face,
Then breathed her last as the moment passed
And lay in a state of grace.

His grief burst out in a torrent, as
He sat by his mother’s bed,
His shoulders heaved as he tried to cleave
To the last that his mother said:
‘Be sure to burn all the papers that
I’ve hidden in drawer and nook,
I’ll never rest ‘til you’ve passed the test,
Be certain to burn the book!’

He paced the floor when he got back home
He paced on into the gloom,
The night came down as he stumbled round
In the house, as still as a tomb.
He spared a thought for his father, gone
And the thought had trembled his lip,
With just the occasional birthday card
Kept under his pillow-slip.

He’d never known why his father left,
Or why his mother was grim,
She’d weep at night with him tucked up tight,
It was nothing to do with him.
He’d reach on out, she’d push him away
On the nights when her grief was worst,
So he’d curl up under the blankets, thought
His life and his love were cursed.

He’d watched her pull out her diary
And fill up her pen with ink,
He never knew what she was writing there
But it gave him pause to think,
In the morning it was hidden away
Far from his prying eyes,
When he’d ask her what she’d written there
She would snap, ‘Just words and lies!’

And now he held the very same book
In the palm of his shaking hand,
He knew that he shouldn’t open it
But his conscience said, ‘I can!’
There were reams and reams of terrible scrawl
Of torment, deep despair,
In a wild, embittered, sad harangue
Like claws in her windswept hair.

There were pleas to her absent husband, saying
‘How could you ever go?
It only happened the once, I swear,
You know that I love you so!’
He flicked through pages, further along
Where the writing was underlined,
‘How could a single fall from grace
See love being so unkind!’

He took the diary out to the bin
And he put a match to the page,
He shouldn’t have read his mother’s sin
Not now that he’d come of age,
As the pages blackened and curled away
He regretted all that he’d done,
For the final page revealed her rage,
She’d written: ‘I hate my son!’

David Lewis Paget

‘We’re floating up with the Angels,’
Said the girl in the pale green dress,
She’d voiced the phrase in German
For the girl had hailed from Hesse,
‘I never have dreamt of a night like this,
We soar like the gods of old,’
Then they came and shut all the windows,
For the night was growing cold.

There wasn’t a shake or a shudder
From the platform in the sky,
The waters of the Atlantic streamed
Below, but they were dry,
A headwind slowed their progress
And a storm was coming on,
The flickers of distant lightning lit
The path that they flew along.

The following day, the coast appeared
But the rain set in the more,
Rather than land, the captain took them
Over the Jersey shore,
The weather was bad at Lakehurst, so
They whiled away the hours,
Floating up there above the clouds
And the steady springtime showers.

They finally dropped the mooring lines
As the crew stood by below,
When a sudden flash was seen up aft
And a roar began to grow,
The ship was lit like a candlestick
As the gas and the fabric scorched,
While a flame enveloped the girl in green
And lit her up like a torch.

The frame crashed down on the gondola
And all you could hear were cries,
It was almost as if the gods had screamed:
‘How dare you enter our skies?’
They say that St. Elmo’s Fire was seen
By the watchers, down on the ground,
But there wasn’t a trace of the girl in green
When the Hindenberg went down.

David Lewis Paget

When first we moved on into the house
They said that we wouldn’t last,
The locals told us nobody had
Of the many who’d left in the past.
We asked if the house was haunted, but
They said that it’s not, ‘It’s cool!’
The reason nobody stayed, they said,
Was the serpent that lived in the pool.

The ‘pool’ it seemed was the small lagoon
That was not so far from the house,
‘You’ll notice that there’s never a rat,
You’ll not see a single mouse!’
It seems the serpent came out at night
And fed on the rodents there,
‘You’d better keep all the windows shut,
And jam the doors with a chair.’

We settled in and we laughed at that,
‘They must believe I’m a fool!
I haven’t found anyone out there yet
Who has seen this thing in the pool.
It’s only a superstition, something
Handed down from the past,
They love to shiver and peddle gloom
In the hopes we’ll be aghast.’

We sauntered down and we took it in,
The water was calm and still,
And willows, myrtles and evergreens
Were set in this sweet idyll,
‘I think that I’m going to love it here,
It’s peaceful and quiet,’ said Cass,
I didn’t mention the snaking trail
That I’d noticed, deep in the grass.

She questioned me when I barred the doors,
And shut all the windows tight,
‘You’re not afraid of the serpent, Jack?’
She laughed, and I said ‘Not quite!
There’s gnats about in the midnight air
And I don’t want them in here.’
She laughed again, ‘That’s a good excuse,
I’m sure to believe you, dear!’

Cass would sleep like a log each night,
Would sleep ‘til the break of day,
But I would wake to the slightest scrape,
To a Hoot-Owl, hunting its prey.
I heard a sound on the patio
Like something slithering there,
A tapping sound on the window pane
And the movement of a chair.

It got to the point I couldn’t sleep,
I’d lie there, listening,
Awake to the slightest sound out there,
The barest rustling,
I’d keep a shovel beside the door
Get up, and sit in fright,
Holding my breath, and waiting for
Its visit, every night.

I opened the door one moonless night
And the monster slithered in,
A forked tongue flickering out in front
And cold eyes full of sin,
I slammed the shovel down on its neck
And the head just fell away,
While the rest just coiled through the open door
And the blood came out in a spray.

I must have got it all over me
So I should have washed my hands,
But somehow, some of the serpent’s blood
Got over the pots and pans,
I dumped the body out in the woods
Hid deep in the winter grass,
Then cooked a breakfast fit for a Queen
For the love of my lady, Cass.

I should have known about serpent’s blood
I should have been more than wise,
For Voodoo tells us that serpent’s blood
Will make you grow snakes inside,
So Cass came down with a fever then
And she moaned and cried, ‘Enough!’
She said, ‘There’s something a-move in there,
That’s slithering round my gut.’

I tended her for a week or more
Put a cold compress on her brow,
Trying to get her fever down,
I wouldn’t have done that now;
The seventh morning I checked on her
And she called out, ‘Don’t come in!’
I saw her there on the bedroom floor,
She’d slithered out of her skin.

I stepped aside as she tried to slide
On out through the open door,
She moved like a snake, covered in scales,
I watched her in shock, and awe,
She slithered down to the old lagoon
And disappeared in the reeds,
And that was the last I saw of Cass
I swear, and my heart, it bleeds.

They’ve got me locked in a prison cell
As they think I’ve done her in,
They went to look why she wasn’t there
But they only found her skin,
They think I’m some sort of monster
That I’m mad, or merely a fool,
I keep on saying they’ll find her,
She’s a serpent, down in the pool.

David Lewis Paget

Whenever the sun sinks down in the west
And the stars come out at night,
The birds return to their cosy nests
And a stray dog barks in fright,
I hear the click of the front door lock
And I let the blinds unfold,
Then hear the whisper behind the clock,
That says, ‘New souls for old!’

And down at the end of the darkened street
Is a man with a horse and dray,
He wears thick felt on his padded boots
And his voice seems far away,
The sacks piled up on the cart are new
And they jump about in the cold,
But his voice gets louder on his approach,
He says, ‘New souls for old!’

So nobody opens their door at night
‘Til the man and his dray have passed,
But peer in fright, and put out the light
Then hold their breath to the last,
They hide their children under the stairs
But the voice wafts in from the cold,
It seems to come from under the chairs
And it says, ‘New souls for old!’

The mirror under the hallway clock
Is hard in the dark to see,
But when I head for the door to lock
Reflects a vision of me,
The eyes are evil, the mouth is grim
And the chin is jutting and bold,
The brow is furrowed and creased with sin
As I hear, ‘New souls for old!’

One night as the gas lamps sputtered out
At the farther end of the street,
I heard the clop of his horse’s hooves
As I strode on out to meet,
The man peered out from under his hood
And told me the price, fourfold,
I’d have to be willing to take his place
To get a new soul for old!

So now I wander the streets at night
Wrapped up in a cloak and hood,
I feel the evil leaching away
As I work for the greater good,
The sacks piled up on the cart are new
And they jump about in the cold,
I’m waiting for someone to take my place
As I say, ‘New souls for old!’

David Lewis Paget

She could make a cow grow sick and die,
She could sicken a healthy pig,
She could poison somebody’s cottage pie
But she couldn’t harm Tom Rigg.
For Tom wasn’t born of woman
He’d been plucked too soon from the womb,
When his mother lay there dying
From a concoction stirred with a broom.

So he’d grown up broad, and tall and strong
With a warlock cast to his eye,
Whatever the spell she tried on him
He would turn on her, ‘Just try!’
She conjured a flight of vampire bats
To follow him here and there,
But the bats were spurned, and then returned
And they tangled up in her hair.

She would lie in wait by the farmer’s gate
With the graveyard dog in a ditch,
So he’d open the sluice that was not in use,
And soak her, every stitch,
She’d scream, come tumbling after him,
‘You think you’re so fine and big,
I’ll spell that you fall in love with me,
Just see if I don’t, Tom Rigg.’

For deep down under her witch’s pride
Was the beat of a woman’s heart,
And the sight of Tom had sent it, quivering
Shaking itself apart,
But Tom had kept himself to himself
Immune to a woman’s wiles,
Determined to fix the old windmill
On the other side of the stile.

He lived in the ancient tower mill
That he’d bought, picked up for a song,
It hadn’t been used for a hundred years
Since part of the works went wrong,
The sails were seized, poked up at the sky
In a way that said, ‘We’re spent!’
But Tom believed that he knew just why;
The cog on the shaft was bent.

He cleaned it up and he scraped the rust
And he greased the copper sheath,
He checked it over and sideways, down
And he peered from underneath,
But the shaft was rigid, it wouldn’t turn
He was giving up in despair,
When late one night with a mighty crash
There was something amiss out there.

He peered up under a rising moon
There was something caught in the sail,
All he could see was a besom broom
But then came an awful wail,
The witch was caught in the topmost sail
Where she’d swooped in the night unseen,
And now she was clung to the old wood frame
And all she could do was scream.

There wasn’t a ladder that went so high
So all he could do was stare,
‘Now how do you think I could rescue you,
And how did you get up there?’
The mill was starting to creak and groan
As the wind came over the hill,
The sails were starting to slowly turn
With the witch stuck firmly still.

The weight of the witch had freed them up
And she shrieked as the sails whirled round,
While Tom was laughing, joyfully, merrily,
Rolling over the ground,
‘I’ll swear you’ve done me a favour, Jane,
I was going to call it quits,
But now, if ever you come back down,
I’m ready to kiss a witch!’

David Lewis Paget

Out on the marsh on a lonely night
The wind soughs through his rags,
The hat that’s pinned to his painted face,
Flutters and soars, then sags,
His eyes are wide and his mouth is grim
As an owl is put to flight,
And nothing but shadows will venture there
For the Scarecrow rules the night.

And back in the manse in a window seat
The Parson’s daughter sits,
She stares at the fluttering coat-tails, but
In truth, is scared to bits,
She watches the sails of the windmill turn
And creak and groan in the gloom,
As clouds come stuttering over the marsh
In the rays of a Harvest Moon.

The father is out in the donkey cart
To tend to his aging flock,
He’s left Elizabeth waiting there
By the tick of the hallway clock,
But out on the moors and beyond the marsh
There rides one Highway Jack,
A frock coat topped with a bunch of lace
And a gold trimmed tricorne hat.

He’s whipped the horse to a lather
In a retreat from a new affray,
For the magistrates have gathered
Vowing to ride him down that day,
The redcoats wait in the village Inn
For the sound that they know too well,
When the curate sees the approaching horse
He’s to toll the old church bell.

But the curate lies in a drunken fit
On the floor of the old church nave,
And soon, by matins his soul will flit
From life to an early grave,
Elizabeth sits in the window seat
And thinks of the coin and plate,
As the highwayman dismounts, and ties
His horse to the manse’s gate.

He beats on the door, ‘Please let me in,
I’m weary and faint, that’s all.
I wouldn’t abuse your person, but
I fear my back’s to the wall.’
She leaves the seat and she slides the bar
For bracing the oaken door,
‘I dare not, sir, I fear for my life,
You’re safer out on the moor!’

Their voices echo across the marsh
Like fear, distilled in the night,
And something shudders out in the gloom
And lurches to left and right,
It seems forever, but now a sound
Tolls out, like a final knell,
For something, out in the church tonight,
Is tolling the steeple bell.

He barely makes it back to his horse
When the redcoats stand in line,
Their muskets fire a volley of shot
And his coat turns red, like wine.
They go to the church when the deed is done
To say, ‘You have done well!’
But the curate lies on the cold stone floor,
The Scarecrow tolled the bell!

David Lewis Paget

They’d crashed the party at midnight
Surely, a motley looking crew,
All of them dressed in the weirdest best
That the Monster Shop could do,
There was Beelzebub, and Astaroth
And the pale Witch of the North,
Ahead of the Prince of Darkness in
A goats-head mask, of course.

They didn’t look out of place, for all
The guests were dressed to ****,
One attired as a Fairy Queen
While others were dressed to chill,
Out of the mouth of Frankenstein
The blood poured in a stream,
And though it was only cochineal
It brought the odd party scream.

Most had thought it a great idea
(Except for her folks, who’d cursed),
They’d all dress up in the neighbourhood
For Emily’s twenty-first,
They’d even formed a committee so
They knew what they had to do,
And each would be wearing a different face
So there’d only be one, not two.

They studied the Ars Goetia
And scanned it for demon names,
The butcher had come as Malphas for
He only had brawn, not brains,
The newsagent was Vapula
And his errand boy was Baal,
While the postmaster was Sallos
And he came there, bearing mail.

They all were full of the grapes of wrath
As it chimed the midnight hour,
While Emily surged out like a goth
From the depths of her wardrobe bower,
The house, at 22 Rankine Street
In the ‘burb of Astral Downs,
Was built where an ancient charnel house
Had piled the bodies in mounds.

Her folks had put in a swimming pool
Where there’d been a village well,
Right on top of a demon school
In the seventh circle of hell,
The water began to heave and churn
As Beelzebub drew near,
And it cooked a few of the swimmers there
As their laughter turned to fear.

‘You thought that you could make fun of us,’
Said the Prince of Darkness then,
‘For that, we’re making you one of us,
You won’t bother us again!’
The ‘burb dropped into a bottomless pit
That glowed with the flames of hell,
‘A subterraneaun coal seam fire,’
Said the Fire Chief, Adam Schnell.

Emily’s parents came back home,
Sat in the car, and cried,
‘I told her that Goth stuff wasn’t good!’
‘Too late! Our Emily’s fried!’
They filled it in, there’s a parking lot
Where her parents had sat and cursed,
I’d like to bet, they’ll never forget
Their Emily’s Twenty-First!

David Lewis Paget

The Lady Mary took to her bed
On the last of the mad March days,
She’d strained her constitution, she said
At that upstart, Shakespeare’s plays,
The ruffians at the Globe were known
To be often rotten with fleas,
‘I must have been bitten,’ Milady said
With her skirt drawn up to her knees.

The footman fastened a painted sign
‘No Visitors’ up at the door,
While one of the maids got down on her knees
And scrubbed at the parquet floor,
Milady took to her poster bed
By a window out to the square,
‘You’d best get down to the Fleet,’ she said,
‘Lord Orton is working there.’

The doctor came with his physic
Carried a nosegay close to his face,
The cane that he prodded Milady with
Would leave her with little grace,
‘The swellings down in Milady’s groin
Will have to be truly bled,
A mixture of clay and violets then
Applied to the sores,’ he said.

The mist swept in and the night came down
As the fever grew apace,
And dark black pustules grew and swarmed
At the Lady Mary’s face,
A shadow fell on the window pane
Of a man stood out in the square,
‘Who is that nightly visitant,
And what is he doing there?’

She couldn’t make out his features for
His hat was broad of brim,
Shading his face and hawk-like nose
Though he kept on looking in,
‘I have a terrible feeling that
I’ve seen that man before,
He’s come from the coffin-maker, and
He waits outside my door.’

She slipped off into unconsciousness
So the footman let him in,
To measure her with a piece of twine
From her head to below her shin,
They waited then for an hour or two
While the doctor had her bled,
She cried aloud at a fancied shroud
And she shrank from it, in dread.

Late on the second day she woke
Lord Orton at her side,
Holding a faded nosegay to
Protect him from his bride,
She heard the clatter of wheels pull up
Outside in the darkened court,
And cried, ‘My Lord, will you leave me now
That my time is running short?’

She lapsed back into a coma, but
She could feel the tremors start,
And something strange had begun to change
In the beating of her heart,
A rattle deep in her throat began
And resounded through her head,
Just as a voice, it seemed to her,
Called out, ‘Bring out your dead!’

David Lewis Paget

It was damp and cold at the office
Where he’d been caught up, working late,
He’d almost finished a gothic
For the collection, ‘Zorga’s Gate’,
The lights had fused and the heat was off
When a chill swept through the air,
Just as he typed that final word
On the screen, that word - ‘Despair!’

He’d written ‘The Pillars of Zorga’s Gate
Rise out of the mist out there,
So only fools and unearthly ghouls
Will gather and stand and stare,
The gates are sticky with blood and gore
From the many who came and tried,
To answer the sign, ‘You’re welcome here!’
‘Til they found that the gates had lied.’

He shivered once at the heartlessness
He’d woven into the plot,
When the evil Baron of Darkness
Turned the key in the dungeon lock,
Then blood flowed down the computer screen
With a font that reeked of  hate:
‘You dare to reveal the mysteries
At the back of Zorga’s Gate?’

Jack sat up straight in his chair in shock,
Peered warily round the room,
He sensed a muttering babble there
From somewhere deep in the gloom,
Then slowly the keyboard typed his name
In white, and the screen was black,
‘Wherever you’re coming from, my friend,
You’ll never be going back!’

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up
And a chill ran down his spine,
‘Somebody’s playing a stupid trick,’
He said, ‘I’ll get the swine!’
He went to type a reply, but by
The time that he hit the key,
The screen switched off, the computer locked
And a voice said, ‘Come with me!’

He fumbled around in the darkness
Staggered once, and he almost fell,
Touched a wall that was damp and cold
And he thought, ‘I can’t be well!’
He found himself on the battlements
Of a castle, cold and grim,
Where the wind howled yet at the parapet
And the thunderclouds rolled in.

A figure was standing behind him
Wearing a hood and a flowing cape,
He turned and backed to the battlements
With his mouth and his jaws agape,
‘I have your Jocelyn bound in chain
Awaiting her sad demise,
I told her I’d only cut her throat
In front of your mortal eyes!’

He prodded Jack in the small of his back
And along a winding stair,
The stone was old, and covered in mould,
And led to a dungeon there,
She lay, fast chained to the dungeon wall
In a bright red party gown,
Jack cried, ‘My God! What’s happening?’
And she said, ‘You let me down!’

‘You let the Baron of Darkness out
When you typed the word ‘Despair!’
And now he’s going to **** us both
For the tale that you tried to share.
He’s kept the secret of Zorga’s Gate
Since Zog and the demons came,
And now that you’ve let the secret out
He says you’re the one to blame!’

The shadow stood in the doorway
With a scimitar raised on high,
While Jack cried, ‘Wait! It’s not too late,
I’ll press the ‘delete’, I’ll try!’
And there was the cursor, blinking fast
At the end of the word ‘Despair!’
It took a second to backspace that
And it suddenly wasn’t there.

Jocelyn walked through the office door
In a bright red party gown,
She said, ‘Don’t tell, you fell asleep!’
He looked at her with a frown.
He’s never written a gothic since
And never will work back late,
But sits with a tome in his padlocked home
Since messing with Zorga’s Gate!

David Lewis Paget

Paulette had phoned in a frenzy, she
Was having a crying fit,
I said, ‘I can’t understand you girl,
Slow down, slow down a bit!’
And then she told me that John was dead
That she’d found him lying there,
That somebody must have broken in
And crushed his skull with a chair.

‘The place is a perfect shambles, Rob,
It looks like a bomb has hit,
There’s blood all over the hearth, the hob,
And outside, over the grit,
He must have left by the patio door
There are footprints over the tiles,
I’ve never seen so much blood before…’
And then she sobbed for a while.

I made the appropriate noises, just
To comfort her in her loss,
But really, I couldn’t care at all,
I just couldn’t give a toss,
For John had jumped in my woman’s bed
The moment my back was turned,
I had to hide that I felt so glad
That all of his boats were burned.

‘I need you Rob, will you come on down,
I can’t do this on my own,’
Her words, the nectar of ancient gods
I felt that my wings had grown.
‘I’ll be there, honey, I won’t be long,
We’ll tidy it up just pat,
I just have something I have to do,
I’ll pop by the Laundromat.’

I tied the washing bag by the neck
To drag it out to the car,
But only got to the hallway when
There came a knock at the door,
A neighbour wanted to borrow a tool
So I rummaged round in the shed,
And when he went, I had to be gone,
Drove straight to my girl’s instead.

The police were crawling all over the place
And said that, ‘You can’t come in!’
‘I came express at my friend’s request.’
‘Too bad, but where have you been?’
I said I’d give them a statement, then
I shrugged and said, ‘That’s that!
Just tell Paulette I’ll come to her when
I’ve been to the Laundromat.’

The police were there at the Laundromat
When I sauntered in with the bag,
The sergeant stared and he pursed his lips
As my shoulders began to sag.
‘What’s that on the bag?’ he questioned me,
And I said, ‘it looks like mud!’
‘Now isn’t that strange, it seems to be
That your bag is seeping blood!’

David Lewis Paget

It comes to us all, we ask ourselves
Is love the source of bliss?
If true, then why did I love her so
And yet feel so amiss?
Could it be conversation that
Would bind us, heart to heart,
Or physical stimulations that
Would sour, before we part.

‘It’s always been such a mystery,’
I said to Anne Marie,
‘What was the force that drew us in,
Why did you cleave to me?’
She shrugged, and thought for a moment,
‘Why must you philosophise?
I thought there was something welcoming
About your soft, grey eyes.’

It wasn’t enough, I knew it then
There had to be more than this,
How could you build a relationship
On a stolen midnight kiss?
I needed to know the locks and chains
That would bind us, as they should,
On through a distant future, when
In thrall to a different mood.

I told her that I was leaving her
On a cold dark winter’s morn,
‘I knew that you would,’ said Anne Marie
As the sun came up at dawn,
‘You’re not content with the time we’ve spent
So your love was not for me.’
I couldn’t tell how my heart was full
With my love for Anne Marie.

But I thought it had to be tested,
Love’s not sure ‘til it’s tasted pain,
By leaving, there could be one result
And that one result was gain,
It would either set us apart for life
As our ardour died in the flame,
Or qualities more substantial would
Draw us together again.

I knew it was quite a gamble, that
It could well change my life,
Tampering with a primal force
Could only bring me strife,
But love would have to be strong as steel,
Unwavering in its course,
To prove that everything else was real
Not waning from the source.

I disappeared for a month or more
But where, I didn’t say,
None of our mutual friends had seen
Me out, by light of day,
I thought to set up a mystery
To prove an ancient saw,
That absence makes the heart fonder
As it did, in times of war.

Whatever I sought to prove, I did,
The proof was in the gruel,
With plenty of time to ponder, though
The lesson learned was cruel.
I crept up there on a starless night
And I heard her whispered lies,
‘I thought there was something welcoming
About your soft, blue eyes.’

David Lewis Paget

‘I’m tired, so tired,’ said Jonathon Black,
‘I can hardly stay awake,’
His wife just stared at the back of his head,
Went back to her currant cake.
She’d heard it all a million times
Was bored with the things he’d say,
She wished he’d pack up his things, sometimes
And quietly go away.

But Jonathon sat in his bamboo chair
And stared at the world outside,
He used to be full of energy,
But something inside him died,
He lived in the shadows of tides and scenes
That were conjured behind his eyes,
The throwaway remnants of others dreams
He’d capture in tears and sighs.

He spent the afternoon nodding off
Then woke with a startled cry,
‘You wouldn’t believe what I saw just now,
Right out of a clear blue sky.
A shadow crept from the bushes there
And it killed young Andrew Deems,’
Giselle had tutted and shook her head,
‘Just one of your stupid dreams!’

The woods, a favourite lovers spot
Stretched out from their own back door,
Giselle would go with a basket there
Looking for mushroom spore.
‘I saw you out in the woods today
But nothing is what it seems,’
She turned and snapped at her husband’s back,
‘Just keep me out of your dreams!’

‘It isn’t a question of that,’ he said,
‘I can’t control what I see,
Wherever a person’s thoughts are at
They keep on coming to me.
Even the strangers that walk on past
Have secrets they send in beams,
You’d think that they would be safe from me
But I’m the waker of dreams.

Giselle had wandered off to the woods
With her basket held on high,
While Jonathon found and loaded his gun,
Went after her with a sigh,
He found her there in a shady nook
In a huddle with Andrew Deems,
‘I thought I’d warned you, often enough,
You didn’t believe, it seems!’

He shot the lad as he tried to run
Then dropped the gun to his side,
‘All I could see in his dreams was you,
But now, that dream has died.’
‘And what will you do with me,’ said she
And bit her lip ‘til it bled,
‘I’m tired, so tired,’ said Jonathon Black
Then put the gun to his head.

David Lewis Paget

I haven’t the pocket to buy antiques
But often I like to go,
To sit at the antique auctions,
See who’s there, who’s in the know,
The men with yen and the businessmen
The Lords and the Ladies too,
Still with the loot their forebears stole
In 1642.

So guys like me can only watch
As the bids creep up each time,
Some of the things they’re bidding for,
It’s like white-collar crime,
There’s better stuff in a garage sale
Or found in a pile of junk,
I come away and I often say:
‘Well, that was a load of bunk!’

But sometimes, at the end of the day
When the bids and the deals are done,
There are items that are cast away
Not even a bid, not one,
And they sit forlorn, out there on the lawn
Where everyone passed them by,
Waiting for owners to pick them up
Under a threatening sky.

That’s where I found the Georgian desk,
Beaten, battered and worn,
The side was scuffed and the top was chipped
With one side panel gone,
Someone had found it, out in a barn,
Under a pile of hay,
And brought it along on spec, they said,
They hoped it would go away.

I said, ‘Well what do you want for it,
I’ll cart it off in the truck,’
He said, ‘I’m happy with forty quid!’
I couldn’t believe my luck.
I got it home and I cleaned it up
And polished the ancient stain,
I’ll swear that the desk had smiled at me
With faith in itself, again.

And then I replaced the panel that
Was missing from times before,
But not before I’d inspected it,
Discovered a secret drawer,
And tucked in there was a parchment
Faded yet, and next to a quill,
It said, ‘Dear Margaret, hearken to me,
This love has made me ill!’

A chill ran suddenly down my spine
The hairs rose up on my neck,
The room went dark as I placed the parchment
Down, face up on the desk.
I felt my heart beginning to pound
As I read what he had to say:
‘I came, my love, at the time you said,
But the soldiers took you away!’

That was the day that changed my life
For the weather ‘til then was fine,
A cloud had come, and covered the sun
As I got to his final line,
Then thunder cracked and rattled the roof
While lightning shattered the birch,
He wrote, ‘Your father and his dragoons
Are out there, guarding the church.’

My mind was set in a turmoil, and
I paced for that afternoon,
Wondering who these people were
That had cast my life in gloom,
The only clue was the cursive date
And the name that he’d finely wrought,
For that was 1768
And his name was Jeremy Thorpe.

It seems they’d planned to elope and wed
In the church at Medlin Tort,
But the father said that he’d strike him dead
Despite what his daughter thought,
For Jeremy was a colonist,
And would take his daughter there,
To the Massachusetts colony,
Revolution in the air!

The nights that I couldn’t sleep, I paced
And wandered from room to room,
The study was faintly lighted by
A waning, rising Moon,
One night a young man sat at the desk
With a powdered wig and quill,
And wrote, ‘My Heart, all hope has fled,
But for me, I love you still.’

I went there looking for answers in
The local reading room,
I searched the shelves of the library
And I found an ancient tome,
A Margaret Evancourt had died
Imprisoned in a mill,
And left a note, ‘My Jeremy,
This heart bleeds for you still.’

That night I sat at the Georgian desk
Picked up the quill and I wrote,
Nothing of great import, but just
A simple, one line note,
I left it there on the desk, and laid
It underneath the quill,
It said, ‘Your love is imprisoned,
You will find her down at the mill!’

I never saw him again, my note
Had gone when I arose,
I couldn’t wait to be off, in haste
I struggled with my clothes,
Then down at the little church I’d found
Still there, at Medlin Tort,
Were written the wedding lines I’d sought
Of Margaret Evancourt.

David Lewis Paget

We’d all been out to the Carnival,
Had chilled and thrilled and cried,
And Patsy laughed that she’d wet her pants
On the killer Monster Ride,
While Orville’s face was covered in floss
In a pink and sticky goo,
And I limped past the Penny a Toss
With something stuck to my shoe.

I’d won a horrible Voodoo Doll
That I tried to pass to Kate,
She said, ‘No fear, if I took that home
I would just lie there, awake!’
We’d had our fun on the Octopus
Though the Mouse had made me sick,
And the Big Wheel stopped in a passing cloud
At the height of a laughing fit..

A spider deep in the Ghost Train came
Unstuck in Patsy’s hair,
And Kate had shrieked, for Patsy had
No clue that it was there.
We threw it one to the other, first
To Orville, then to Jack,
But then it landed on some old dear
And gave her a heart attack!

We laughed and pranced and we danced beside
The sideshows – ‘Way to go!’
But Orville fumbled the rifle and
He shot some guy in the toe,
We had to run but were laughing there
So hard, and fit to bust,
That Richard ruptured himself out there,
And now he’s wearing a truss!

The time it had come to wander home
So we wiped off Orville’s goo,
But I had trouble in walking with
That thing, still stuck to my shoe.
I slid and wiped and I scraped at it
But nothing would make it budge,
Said Jack, ‘Just what do you think it is?’
I replied, ‘some sort of sludge.’

We got to the edge of the fairground
And the others wandered home,
But I was stuck, I couldn’t move,
I was standing there, alone.
And then my foot had begun to turn
Back to the lights and sound,
I felt myself, being impelled
By my shoe across the ground.

I tried to twist and I tried to turn
But my shoe was saying, ‘No!’
I had to follow wherever it went,
Wherever it wanted to go.
It took me back through the alleyways
Still lit with a thousand globes,
I felt a bit like a Brahman Bull
With a steel ring through my nose.

It dragged my foot through the mud and slush
And the other followed too,
I didn’t have much of a choice, I thought
As long as I wore the shoe,
It led me in to a darkened tent
With a dais, up on high,
Where a shadow sat in an old top hat
With a single gleaming eye.

The shadow opened its mouth to speak
And its teeth were long and sharp,
‘What have you brought me now to eat,
Some dross you found in the park?’
The voice was deep, was a muffled growl
And it shook the earthen floor,
The shoe was dragging me forward as
I turned for the flap of a door.

I felt a wrench and the shoe came off
So I hopped and ran like mad,
The growl of the shadow had freaked me out,
It had to be more than bad!
My father gave me a hiding when
He found that I’d lost my shoe,
He wouldn’t listen when I exclaimed:
‘You would have lost it, too!’

Next day the shoe was sat at my door
Its prints deep pressed in the lawn,
I couldn’t have put that shoe back on
If the Devil had blown his horn.
I took a stick and I picked it up
And dropped it straight in the bin,
I couldn’t go near a Carnival now,
I’m too attached to my skin!

David Lewis Paget

I’d only been home for a week or two
And Jeanine was acting queer,
Each time she’d pass the mirror she’d stare
And I heard her say, ‘Oh dear!’
I’d been away for five long years
But she hadn’t changed a bit,
Each time I’d ask, she’d cover her ears:
‘I have to go to The Crypt!’

I thought that she meant the local club
Where they drank and danced all night,
‘Aren’t you a little too old for that,’
I’d say, and her face turned white.
‘You’re only as old as you feel,’ she snapped,
‘If only,’ was my reply,
‘Whether we like it or not, we age,
And then, we finally die.’

She put her hands to her ears, and shrieked,
‘Don’t ever say that to me!
You can die, but I’ll still go on,
I’ll be what I want to be.’
I stood quite shocked as she raved, she cried
And turned and ran from the room,
I didn’t know what to make of her,
So sat, half stunned in the gloom.

She’d always worried about her looks
Had made up her face for hours,
I’d said, ‘You’re really compulsive, Sis,’
She’d take innumerable showers.
I said, ‘You’re washing yourself away,
There’ll be no oil in your skin.’
‘But don’t you think that I’m beautiful,’
She’d say, with an evil grin.

She’d never married, but dated men
Who would compliment on her looks,
‘He said I’m like Cleopatra,’ or,
‘Like Helen of Troy in the books!’
‘Words are cheap,’ I would say to her
And she’d fly right into a rage,
‘You’re always trying to put me down!’
‘You’re like a bird in a cage!

Always fluffing your feathers up
To say, ‘Hey look at me!’
Don’t you care for the things in life
That are not complimentary?’
But she would shrug and ignore me then
She was vain beyond compare,
I didn’t know that she’d signed a pact
With the Devil, in her despair.

The weeks went by and her mood got worse,
She was nervous, I could see,
Her hands would tremble and she would curse
Applying her toiletry.
The wrinkles set in around her eyes
‘So much for that cream I bought!
I’ll have to go to The Crypt,’ she cried,
And burst in tears at the thought.

One day I spied her out in the street
Down by a ruined church,
She forced her way past the battened door
And disappeared with a lurch.
I waited hours, out there in the street
To see when she’d reappear,
Then realised she’d gone to the crypt
In the bowels of that church, in there.

She came out walking, as in a trance,
So beautiful, redefined,
I couldn’t believe the change in her,
I thought that I’d lost my mind.
The girl I saw was only a shell
Of the woman who once was whole,
Whoever she’d met in that evil crypt
Had walked away with her soul!

David Lewis Paget

They’d sat beneath the sweltering sun
For an hour, or maybe two,
Lost somewhere on the Birdsville Track
They didn’t know what to do.
‘Stay with the car,’ said Derek Beech,
‘They’ll come and find us soon.’
‘Better we walk,’ said Colleen Scott,
‘Til we find that last lagoon.’

They glared and bickered, and pursed their lips,
The battlelines were drawn,
He to stay with the crippled car,
She to go wandering on.
‘The temperature’s hitting fifty C
If you go, you won’t survive.’
‘Rather than dehydrate out here,
I want to get out alive!’

They’d driven through Cooper’s Crossing
As the day was becoming dark,
He had been keen for pushing on
Though she had wanted to park.
The driver had the advantage, so
Their lights cut into the night,
In through the gibber country, where
The tracks crossed, left and right.

They’d entered the Stony Desert when
The first of the tyres blew,
They’d only taken a single spare,
She said, ‘That’s down to you!’
It took an hour to change it
Trying to jack the car in the sand,
The jack would sink in the bulldust mix
So she had to lend a hand.

By morning they were completely lost
And the radiator boiled,
The lights had flashed all over the dash
And the motor suddenly stalled.
‘I can’t believe that we’re stuck out here,’
She’d wailed, and punched his arm,
‘Why did I ever listen to you?
I should have stayed on the farm.’

‘Maybe you should,’ said Derek Beech,
His temper beginning to show,
‘You’re not much good at the outback life,
Go back to your Auntie Flo!’
‘That’s it,’ she said, and she pulled the ring
He’d given her days before,
Flung it down in his lap, and watched
It bounce to the desert floor.

She took a bottle of water, then
Stomped off the way that they came,
‘If you get lost you will die out there
With only yourself to blame!’
She took a short cut back to the track
They’d turned off, hours before,
And gradually drank the water, though
She knew that she needed more.

The endless dry and barren land
Had not seen rain for years,
The track wiped out by the drifting sand,
Colleen was soon in tears,
She stopped beneath a coolibah tree
Surviving on its own,
And rested there in the paltry shade
In the land of the great unknown.

While Derek sat in an agony
Of doubts, to cloud his mind,
Should he have gone along with her,
Or should he have stayed behind?
Some hours had passed before he rose
To place the ring on the car,
Along with a note, ‘I love you, girl,
But I don’t know where you are.’

He started to walk the way she’d gone,
The sun, it was going down,
He knew that hope was a step too far
As he walked along, and frowned,
If only he’d thought to call her name
Snapped out of his mute dismay,
He might have met her along the track,
Coming the other way.

They were only a hundred yards apart
When they passed like ships in the night,
And she had stumbled back to the car
When the sun put gloom to flight,
She found the note and she found the ring
And she placed it back on her hand,
Then sank beside their wreck of a car
And was covered by drifting sand.

While he was found, propped up by the tree
In the glare of the blazing sun,
His final thought of the way they’d fought
That never could be undone.
But love was there in the desert air
As she lay, the ring on her hand,
While he clung on to the bottle, she’d
Flung empty, down on the sand.

David Lewis Paget

Gretchen wept in her easy chair
And called for her husband, Karl,
They’d been together for sixty years,
Though both were worn and frail.
They’d met in the ruins of München, when
The ***** collapsed and fell,
Escaped to live in Australia
From their own idea of hell.

For Karl had served in the Wehrmacht,
In a Tank Corps at Dieppe,
Had served in the Panzergruppe von Kleist
Had roamed the Russian steppes,
His tank had taken him through Ukraine
They’d taken the plains by force,
But found their pain when the Russians came,
In their huge T-34’s.

But that was the world of way back when,
For Karl was old and grey,
He slept a lot in his tidy home,
The nurse came every day,
His wife developed dementia, she’d
Forget where she used to roam,
So she was parted from husband Karl,
Was sent to a Nursing Home!

He walked with the aid of a walking frame,
He couldn’t quite get around,
But listened for echoes of Gretchen’s voice
In the house that made no sound,
And all he thought was to rescue her,
To bring his girl back home,
But the powers that be said: ‘Wait and see!’
She was lost to him - Alone!

He went to visit her, once a week,
They held each other's hand,
She cried so much when he had to leave,
She never could understand,
And he was desolate every time,
He’d cling to her so tight,
That they had to prise his hand away
When they sent him away at night.

The nurses were harsh and businesslike,
To them it was just a job,
With no compassion for patients, they
Would leave all that to God.
Demented souls ran over his feet
With trolleys and walking frames,
When Karl grew angry, they shrugged and said:
‘Well - Everyone complains!’

One Sunday, standing outside the doors,
He saw his Tiger Tank,
It growled, and pulled up beside him there
And the diesel fumes, they stank.
He climbed aboard with his comrades there,
And ‘Schnell!’ they called, to a man,
Then lumbered straight through the double doors,
The nurses turned and ran!

The Tiger reared and it turned about
Tore carpet up from the floor,
The tracks ran over the matron’s feet,
Let out a fearful roar,
The patients cheered as the Iron Cross
Raced past their common room,
And smashed the glass in the office door,
And crushed the sister’s urn!

Then Gretchen laughed as he came in sight,
‘Here comes my husband, Karl!
He'll break us out of this prison ward,
Can you hear his Tiger snarl?’
He stopped and reached for his Gretchen then
Looked deep in her eyes, and swore:
‘I’ll not be parted from you again
Though hell should bar the door!’

They found them lying together there,
He held her safe in his arms,
They'd gone together where lovers go
Away from the world's alarms.
‘He went quite crazy,’ the Matron said,
‘He must have been insane!’
For lying outside her shattered door
Was his twisted walking frame!

David Lewis Paget

Wherever I go, whatever I do
He follows me up the street,
I cross the road and he crosses it too,
We never actually meet,
He knows I know, it’s a waiting game
For I know he knows I know,
No matter how often I give him the slip
He’s there, where I get to go.

I have no clue what he wants with me
But he’s going to have to wait,
I often stop, and he walks on by
Or I hide by the garden gate,
Then just when I think the coast is clear
He pops up, out of the blue,
Or reads the paper and catches the bus,
Just as I catch it, too.

I try to pretend that he isn’t there
That I’m sitting quite on my own,
I don’t know whether he’s dark or fair,
I sit and play with my phone,
He seems to know when I’m getting off
He’s the first one off the bus,
And I’ve often thought to stay in my seat
But I don’t like making a fuss.

At work, I see him in offices
That are off the beaten track,
When I’m on my way to the novices
His eyes burn holes in my back,
If I take an early minute he’s there
Propped up by the factory gate,
Deep in a conversation with
A guy I thought was a mate.

I’m not going to let it get to me,
I won’t let him get me down,
I try to pretend he’s a nobody
When really, he’s such a clown.
He wears a million different suits
Is always changing his hat,
He walks a dog and he smokes a pipe
And he changes, just like that!

I thought I’d go to the police one day
To say he was stalking me,
They asked for a brief description, and
I said he was hard to see.
‘Just give the colour of hair and eyes
So that we can put on a trace.’
‘He’s always changing, he lives in lies,
He’s the Man with Another Face!’

I saw the look that he gave the man
Who was slinking down in the hall,
I knew that I’d never be free of him
Surrounding me, wall to wall.
They put me here in a padded cell
Where at least I’m on my own,
But I still feel ill when he opens the grill
And his eyes burn through to the bone.

David Lewis Paget

I was staying in the village
That was known as Banzhushan,
In the mountains, in the Province
That the Chinese call Hunan,
It was perched atop the mountain
You could reach, and touch the sky,
But there were no single women,
And the men up there were shy.

They were poor, could offer nothing
To entice a willing bride,
They earned little from their labours,
And their houses, poor inside,
So the girls would leave to travel
Down the mountain to the plain,
Where they’d find a richer husband
Than the farmer, sowing grain.

So the men would send out raiders
To the outskirts of the towns,
And they’d kidnap straying peasants,
All the women that they found,
And they’d target younger widows
Who would not put up a fight,
Then would carry them to Banzhushan
Protected by the night.

I had met a village elder
By the name of Zhang Fan Cheng,
He was ancient, a magician,
One the Chinese call yāorén,
He invited me to dinner,
It was simple, shoots and rice,
He was dignified and courteous,
But caught me by surprise.

In the further room, a mirror
Stood at length, both straight and tall,
The frame was wrought in silver
And it leant against the wall,
He showed it to me proudly
Then asked how much would I pay?
For just 5,000 R.M.B.
He’d sell it me, today!

I reached out to feel the silver,
Was it fake or was it real?
He sensed my hesitation
Then he motioned, ‘You be still!’
And plunged his hand into the glass
The mirror let him in,
His arm up to the elbow
Against science, against sin!

He reached his arm behind and pulled,
A girl came into sight,
She was standing in the mirror,
He was holding her so tight,
And she stared, while looking at me
And she said: ‘Qing bang bang wo!’
I could read it on her lips, and then
The wizard let her go.

She had said: ‘Would you please help me!’
But I’d stepped back in the room,
She was nowhere near behind me
Just reflected, in the gloom,
And I saw a tear forming at
The corner of her eye,
The wizard pulled his arm out, and
She waved to me, ‘Goodbye!’

I paid the man his money, and
I took the mirror down
On a wooden cart he lent me,
And I took it through Hunan,
Then I packed it on a train and went
Off speeding to Nanjing,
Where I kept a small apartment,
And I turned, and locked us in.

I stood the mirror over by
A meagre wooden shelf,
Then I stood quite still before it
Hoping she would show herself,
And I tried to put my arm inside
Like he had done before,
But the mirror was unyielding,
So I stood there, and I swore!

That night the girl appeared,
Standing right behind the glass,
And she pummelled on the surface
As if she’d be free at last,
But the mirror was ungiving,
And I couldn’t hear her voice,
So I took a ball pein hammer -
It had given me no choice!

She could see me through the mirror,
In alarm, she mouthed ‘Meiyou!’
But her beauty had beguiled me
Though I knew she’d shouted ‘No!’
I was fevered and impatient now
To set this beauty free,
So I swung the ball pein hammer
And it shattered, over me!

She fell out through the broken glass,
Lay trembling in my room,
Bleeding, sobbing in the silence,
Like the silence of the tomb,
And she said she’d been imprisoned
Since the days of Qin **** Huang,
Then she writhed upon the carpet
As her flesh turned into sand.

I had wanted to release her
To relieve those tender tears,
But her body, once released took on
The last two thousand years;
She took one last, despairing look
Then withered up to die,
And for years I’ve sought the answer
To the only question - ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

(Glossary -
R.M.B. - Ren-Min-bi - or yuan (Chinese currency.)
Yāorén - magician
Qing bang bang wo - (Ching bang bang wor) - Please help me!
Meiyou - (May yo) - No, nothing
Qin **** Huang - (Chin Sher Hwang)
1st Emperor of China - 246-210 BC)

The beach swept away in the distance,
The tide as far out as could be,
A couple were laughing and playing there,
She’d cuffed him, in fun, to a tree,
‘Now that isn’t fair, Isabella,’
He’d laughed, as she danced in the sand,
‘You’re going to be mine, Richard Andrew Devine
Or forever be tied to the land.’

She taunted and teased and annoyed him,
He said, ‘I just want to be free!’
She spun on the sand and she held out her hand
And she laughed as she dangled the key.
‘You can stay ‘til I hear your proposal,
It’s like squeezing out blood from a stone,
If you fail to propose, this relationship’s closed
And I’ll leave you out here on your own.’

‘We’ve talked about this, Isabella,
And you know it can’t possibly be,
I’m already wed, when you came to my bed…
For God’s sake, just throw me the key!’
‘You know that you’ve never been happy,
With her, or with all of her friends,
It’s time you got rid of the lot of them,
It’s time you were making amends.’

‘I said at the start, Isabella,
That a fling was the most it could be,’
A shadow passed over his worried brow
As he looked at the incoming sea.
‘That might have been in the beginning,
But you know it’s gone further than that,
I’m having your child, did you know, in a while
And I’ll not have you leaving me flat.’

The sweat had burst out on his fevered brow
As the water encroached on the sand,
‘Did you know we’re beneath the high water mark,
In an hour or so, I’ll be drowned!’
‘The choice becomes yours, you must get a divorce
Or I’ll just walk away and be free.
There’s no going back, I’m determined in that,
I’ll be walking away with the key.’

The sea was beginning to lap at his feet,
And she to retreat as it came,
Then suddenly she was beginning to sink
While crying that he was to blame.
In seconds she’d sunk in the sand to her waist
In terror she cried, ‘Rescue me!’
But he was restrained by a half inch of chain,
‘For God’s sake, just throw me the key!’

‘How do I know that you won’t walk away
And just leave me to sink in the sand?’
‘I wouldn’t do that, just throw me the key
Or we’ll both become part of the land!’
She’d sunk to her shoulders at this point in time
And she struggled to pull out her arm,
Then raised it on high and she let the key fly
As they both held their breath, in alarm.

‘I’ve told her I want a divorce,’ he cried,
As the key fell just short of his reach,
‘And I lost the baby a week ago,’
She cried, to her neck in the beach.
They stared at each other as she sank from sight
Then the water rose over his head,
As a little gold key, was swept by the sea
To a hand that was already dead.

David Lewis Paget

The winter fogs roll in from the Thames
While frost forms up on the eaves,
The damp will settle in aching bones,
While the trees are bereft of leaves;
The streets were stark in the old East End
A footfall echoed and died,
And nights when the homes were shuttered in
They listened to wheels outside.

A Landau, black as the devil’s sin
And drawn by a single horse,
Rolled slowly up to The Black Dog Inn
By the side of the watercourse,
When out there came from the ***** house
In black from her head to tail,
A dollymop with a nosegay,
Wearing a bonnet, black, with a veil.

She’d climb up into the Landau while
The coachman, clad in a cloak,
Would give one flick with the reins,
And pull on the bit ‘til the horse had choked,
He’d take them off with a clatter
Wheels a-rattle on cobblestones,
His eyes agleam like a demon
While he whipped the horse to the bone.

The horse’s hooves on the cobbles
Warned ahead through the fog and mist,
As people cowered in doorways
Shouted a curse as the Landau passed,
They followed the glow of the gaslamps
Shedding their weak and feeble light,
And raced by the mighty river
Into the dark of the endless night.

They came to a halt at Wapping
Down where the river cast its spawn,
The bodies of dead and drowned who’d
Cursed their mothers for being born,
And hung on poles at the river’s edge
Was another terrible sight,
The bodies of sailor mutineers
That swung in their chains at night.

Hung on the Tyburn gallows
Then cut down and shackled again,
The bodies were coated with tallow
For a post mortem hanging in chain,
They’d bind them up with a winding cloth
Then coat them again in tar,
Hang them in chains at the riverside
‘Til their dust blew near and far.

The woman climbed out of the Landau
Took one look, and fell to her knees,
Her lover hung gently swaying,
Swaying in time to the river breeze,
His eyes stared out from the candle wax
And his mouth was shaped in an ‘Oh!’
He seemed to be saying, ‘Goodbye, my love;
What a terrible way to go!’

She wept like a woman demented,
Seized his legs, and pulled to her breast,
Clung to his swinging figure
Moaned like a creature, quite obsessed,
She tried transferring her warmth to him
But his cold was the cold of death,
And his eyes stared straight ahead of him
No thoughts, no love, no breath!

She climbed back into the Landau
As the coachman whipped it away,
And often at night they hear it go,
Those folks down Wapping way,
They say it spattered a stream of blood
On the road as it raced on by,
From the dollymop who’d slashed her throat
And lay in the coach to die.

And when there’s a mighty river fog
In the winter, down by the Thames,
They sit in the Inn they call Black Dog
And they drink to the health of friends,
They drink to the ones who’ve gone before
As they hear the wheels outside,
And hold their breath at the emptiness
As the door is opened wide!

David Lewis Paget

He was standing out on the balcony
While the party raged inside,
I’d had enough of the trivial talk,
Boosting each other’s pride,
I went and I stood some feet away
As he stared up at the stars,
‘Your sky is rather ordinary,
Not in the least like ours!’

I managed a double take at that
I’d noticed him once before,
He seemed to be on his own, and lonely
Sad, and a bit unsure,
He watched the girls in their party clothes
As they laughed, and talked and sighed,
‘Our Evrons never would dress like that
The colours would hurt their eyes.’

I laughed, thought he was having me on
But he didn’t even smile,
‘I shouldn’t have jumped the Interspace
But stuck with the Stellar Mile,
They said to avoid the Milky Way
But me, I jumped the gun,
The only reason they’d come this way
Is to dump, on the Garbage Run.’

‘I think you’re a little eccentric, and
You’re maybe a little drunk,
You don’t look much like an alien,
And aliens, well, they’re bunk!
But now you’re going to tell me you’re
A little green man from Mars!’
‘Oh, much, much further than that,’ he said
‘I come from a distant star.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, just to humour him
But a chill crept up my spine,
He seemed so positive, standing there
A man from another time.
‘So tell me, what is so different to
The place that you call your home.’
He offered the piece de resistance then,
‘We live in an Astrodome.’

‘The air surrounding planet Vair
Has become too thin to breathe,
Since ever the trees and lipids died
And we found that we couldn’t leave.
The planet was ***** and plundered
For a million years or so,
And now it’s a dying shell we need
To find some planet to go.’

‘I think that I may have found it, though
Your culture’s such a bore,
You worship all material things
And your planet’s still at war,
We’ll have to thin out your people and
Improve your planet’s race,
You’re going to have to move over when
We come from outer space.’

‘How many of you are here right now?’
I tried to sound surprised,
He said, ‘I’m travelling on my own,’
And I looked into his eyes,
‘So none of your people know we’re here
Until you decide to tell!’
He turned to me, and he shook his head,
I said, ‘That’s just as well.’

I walked him around the garden and
I picked his brains for hours,
He told me about their laser rays
And their telepathic powers,
Then finally when he asked my leave
And buttoned up his coat,
I stabbed him with some garden shears
Leant down, and cut his throat!

David Lewis Paget

Deep in the village of Darkling
Where the Squires and their Ladies rule,
No-one comes out in the eventime
Unless they’re a brazen fool,
The Hunt is rallied for after dark
And they wear the hood and the cowl,
Roam far and wide through the countryside
While the ravening hounds just howl.

They say that they’re hunting foxes,
But I know, that just isn’t true,
That blood they seek at the end of the week,
They may be looking for you,
They take their cues from the Magistrate
Who leads the Hunt through the grounds,
His word is law, and he sets the score,
They call him the Master of Hounds.

Sir Roland Bear has an awful stare
As he glares at you from the bench,
The lawyers do what they’re told to do
And offer little defence,
If you poach a hare from a Squire’s land
Or take a fish from his stream,
And you see him add your name to a list,
You know it’s your final scene!

For once outside in the courtyard there
The peasants will stare in dread,
They cross themselves as they pass you by
For nobody speaks to the dead!
You can’t go hide in your cottage,
If it still has a window or door,
Though you’re locked right in, the hounds of sin
Will come up through a hole in your floor.

The light of my life, Evangeline,
Was married to Percival Shroud,
He beat her once with a riding crop
To keep her bullied and cowed,
She worked all day in the Dairy,
In a barn on Percival’s Farm,
And I said one day that he’d have to pay,
I’d not see her come to harm.

She stared at me with her worried eyes
And she let me believe she cared,
We’d hide together beneath the hay
At the height of our love affair,
But one day soon, her burly groom
Had seen us going to ground,
And hauled us before the Magistrate
While our legs and our hands were bound.

‘There isn’t a place in Darkling here
For the likes of a pair like you!’
Sir Roland Bear, his pen in the air
Considered what he would do.
‘You’ve wandered outside the marriage bounds
Brought shame on the vows you swore,
While you have sullied her decency,
And turned a wife to a *****!’

He put his pen to the fabled list
And he wrote two names in there,
Then ****** us into the courtyard so
The folk could shame and stare.
They cut our bonds and we heard the hounds
As they howled and yapped for blood,
So we went trembling, hand in hand
To hide ourselves in the wood.

The Squires were grim and remorseless when
The Hunt pursued its fare,
Their Ladies thought it a festival
When they rubbed warm blood in their hair,
I’d said I’d not let her come to harm
But Evangeline had cried,
I broke a branch and I sharpened it
To defend my shattered pride.

They came at us like the hounds of hell
In their cloaks, and hoods and cowls,
Along with a pack of hunting dogs,
We could hear their approaching howls,
Evangeline was safe in a tree
While I stood guard below,
My fear was clear in my trembling hands
But I stood so it wouldn’t show.

A rider burst on out through the trees
And he roared, ‘Now pay for your crime!’
I waited until he rode up close
Then I ****** my stake in his eye,
He screamed just once, and fell from his horse
And his cowl, it floated wide,
I saw I’d killed the Master of Hounds
As the dogs tore at his hide.

The Squires looked down with little remorse
At the corpse that lay in the mud,
While the ladies leapt from their jittery mounts
To dip their hands in his blood,
We made our way unseen through the woods
Escaped from the killing grounds,
And Darkling now is free from the spell
Of the evil Master of Hounds!

David Lewis Paget

The god from the past came stalking,
Came clambering over the hill,
He’d woken first thing in the morning
With a hangover, fit to chill,
Those Roman debauches with grapes and wine,
The reds and the whites of the Tuscan kind,
The fruit of an overburdened vine,
Were sapping his energy still.

He’d rubbed at his eyes in the dawning,
And wondered where everyone went,
For nothing remained of the Roman baths
Not even a soldier’s tent,
And where was the maiden he’d last embraced
The sweet  Lucina, so fair of face,
Whose long held virtue was laid to waste
When the force of his love was spent.

Invidia’s green and brooding eyes
Had watched as he laid her down,
Had mixed her potions to match his lies
As they struggled, there on the ground.
She thought, ‘No god should be so remiss
As to offer a rival a tainted kiss,
From now, I’ll act as his Nemesis,
He’ll sleep while the world turns round.

She poured him a draught of her potion then
The last of his thirst to slake,
Though Empires rose and fell again
She vowed that he’d never wake.
The buildings crumbled and turned to dust
As the god dreamt long of his love, and lust,
While Nemesis thought her scheme was just
And the field turned into a lake.

The ages tired and the gods retired
To their mansions, high on the mount,
But he continued to sleep and dream
More years than he could count,
The god slept through in a dream sublime
While generations were buried in lime,
Two thousand years was a blink in time
For the gods in their banishment.

He woke on a chilly Autumn day
And found himself in a lake,
Shivered once, and then strode away
For his heart had begun to ache,
He walked down into a valley plain
Green and fresh in the Autumn rain,
When out of a tunnel streamed a train
With a scream, and the squeal of brakes.

‘By Juvenal!’ cried the god in shock
As the carriages streamed on by,
Then up above, like a giant gnat
A vehicle flew in the sky.
‘The world has changed since I fell asleep
The gods have fled to the mountain keep,
And men have conjured a giant leap,
The world has passed us by!’

He ran headlong through the tunnel
Hoping to find Lucina again,
And that was the great explosion that
Nobody could explain.
The diesel engine was rendered flat
With carriages piled on top of that,
While Nemesis on the mountain sat
Her tears flowing like rain!

David Lewis Paget