Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NOCTURNAL CRIME AT THE CHATEAU, by PAUL FORT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NOCTURNAL CRIME AT THE CHATEAU, by                    
First Line: Is the chateau to spooks a prey, the black chateau of la ferte?
Last Line: There to see) -- the black chateau of la ferte!
Subject(s): Crime & Criminals; Ghosts; Night; Supernatural; Bedtime


Is the chateau to spooks a prey, the black chateau of La Ferte? . . . Is this a
fire? Is this the moon? In quick succession through the gloom four windows blaze
with fervid light. Are these the shaken torches bright of ghosts, that pace with
noiseless feet, tonight, where the plateau is sweet with fragrant herbs the
breezes sway.

-- Ghosts, I'm alone. What message, pray?

To the owlet's hooting cry remote, the Gothic window now doth flare; to the
toad's harsh croaking, on its note, appears the chapel -- who goes there! . . .
to the ominous raven's cawing drear, three massive tombstones upward rear, and
where the window's dyes are shed, a maddened dance begin to tread. Is the
chateau to spooks a prey, the black chateau of La-Ferte?

-- Ghosts, I'm alone. What message, pray?

To the whistling of a train that nears, coming from Villers-Cotteret, rending
his slab of granite grey, lo, Alexandre Dumas appears, to another train's ill-
omened call, from where you like, to me all's one, bursting another burial
stone, starts forth the shade of Paul Feval; to a harsh siren's deafening
shrieks, that shake the air despotically -- the siren of a steamer -- one
distinguishes, come, can you not imagine? in his Highland breeks, the phantom of
Sir Walter Scott, which, as if inadvertently, slips from the third uplifted
stone.

-- Ghosts, I'm alone. What message, pray?

From Notre-Dame dread midnight tolls. Three poignards gleam above three souls.
From the ruins, 'tis no mortal cry! -- Ghosts, I'm alone. What message, pray? --
"We assassinate Racine!" reply the tones of Scott, befogged and dim from ancient
bumperfulls of gin, reply the droning accents fine of Dumas savouring a wine,
replies the low, sepulchral call of hydrophobic Paul Feval, and, thunderstruck,
I flee away, leaving the flares to sink and swoon, tombs to disintegrate in
sooth, allowing peaceably the moon to mount the manor's slated roof. But that it
was to spooks a prey, ill habited by phantoms three -- (some other night go
there to see) -- the black chateau of La Ferte!





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