The Idiot

    Two children in a garden
    Shouting for joy
    Were playing dolls and houses,
    A girl and boy.
    I smiled at a neighbor window,
    And watched them play
    Under a budding oak tree
    On a wintry day.

    And then a board half broken
    In the high fence
    Fell over and there entered,
    I know not whence,
    A jailbird face of yellow
    With a vacant sulk,
    His body was a sickly
    Thing of bulk.

    His open mouth was slavering,
    And a green light
    Turned disc-like in his eyeballs,
    Like a dog's at night.
    His teeth were like a giant's,
    And far apart;
    I saw him reel on the children
    With a stopping heart.
    He trampled their dolls and ruined
    The house they made;
    He struck to earth the children
    With a dirty spade.
    As a tiger growls with an antelope
    After the hunt,
    Over the little faces
    I heard him grunt.

    I stood at the window frozen,
    And short of breath,
    And then I saw the idiot
    Was Master Death!

    A bird in the lilac bushes
    Began to sing.
    The garden colored before me
    To the kiss of spring.
    And the yellow face in a moment
    Was a mystic white;
    The matted hair was softened
    To starry light.
    The ragged coat flowed downward
    Into a robe;
    He carried a sword and a balance
    And stood on a globe.
    I watched him from the window
    Under a spell;
    The idiot was the angel
    Azrael!