The Phantom Ball

You remember the hall on the corner?
    To-night as I walked down street
I heard the sound of music,
    And the rhythmic beat and beat,
In time to the pulsing measure
    Of lightly tripping feet.

And I turned and entered the doorway -
    It was years since I had been there -
Years, and life seemed altered:
    Pleasure had changed to care.
But again I was hearing the music
    And watching the dancers fair.

And then, as I stood and listened,
    The music lost its glee;
And instead of the merry waltzers
    There were ghosts of the Used-to-be -
Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers
    Who once had danced with me.

Oh, 'twas a ghastly picture!
    Oh, 'twas a gruesome crowd!
Each bearing a skull on his shoulder,
    Each trailing a long white shroud,
As they whirled in the dance together,
    And the music shrieked aloud.

As they danced, their dry bones rattled
    Like shutters in a blast;
And they stared from eyeless sockets
    On me as they circled past;
And the music that kept them whirling
    Was a funeral dirge played fast.

Some of them wore their face-cloths,
    Others were rotted away.
Some had mould on their garments,
    And some seemed dead but a day.
Corpses all, but I knew them
    As friends, once blithe and gay.

Beauty and strength and manhood -
    And this was the end of it all:
Nothing but phantoms whirling
    In a ghastly skeleton ball.
But the music ceased - and they vanished,
    And I came away from the hall.