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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse  »  George MacDonald (1824–1905)

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Mammon Marriage

George MacDonald (1824–1905)

THE CROAK of a raven hoar!

A dog’s howl, kennel-tied!

Loud shuts the carriage-door:

The two are away on their ghastly ride

To Death’s salt shore!

Where are the love and the grace?

The bridegroom is thirsty and cold!

The bride’s skull sharpens her face!

But the coachman is driving, jubilant, bold,

The devil’s pace.

The horses shiver’d and shook

Waiting gaunt and haggard

With sorry and evil look;

But swift as a drunken wind they stagger’d

’Longst Lethe brook.

Long since, they ran no more;

Heavily pulling they died

On the sand of the hopeless shore

Where never swell’d or sank a tide,

And the salt burns sore.

Flat their skeletons lie,

White shadows on shining sand;

The crusted reins go high

To the crumbling coachman’s bony hand

On his knees awry.

Side by side, jarring no more,

Day and night side by side,

Each by a doorless door,

Motionless sit the bridegroom and bride

On the Dead-Sea-shore.