---

On the black gallows, one-armed friend

The lean, the devil's paladins

The skeletons of Saladins

Dance of the Hanged Men

Sir Beelzebub pulls by the scruff

His little black puppets who grin at the sky

The crow acts as a plume for these cracked brains

A scrap of flesh clings to each lean chin

You would say, to see them turning in their dark combats

They were stiff knights clashing pasteboard armours

Hurray! the gay dancers, you whose bellies are gone!

Never mind whether it's fighting or dancing!

Beelzebub, maddened, saws on his fiddles!

Clenches his knuckles on his thighbone with a crack

Uttering cries like mocking laughter

Skips back into the dance to the music of the bones!