III.— THIRD PANEL: THE TREE

The crooked tree creaked as its loaded bough dipped

And suddenly jerked up. The rope had slipped,

And hideously Judas fell, and all the grass

Was soused and reddened where he was,

And the tree creaked its mirth....

Mid the hot sky

Appeared immediate dots tiny and high,

Till downward wound in batlike herds

Black, monstrous, gawky birds,

And, narrowing their rustling rings,

Alit, talons foremost. And with flat wings

Flapped in the branches, and glared, and croaked and croaked,

While no compassionate human came and cloaked

The thing that stared up at the giddy day

With pale blue eyeballs and wry-lipped display

Of yellow teeth closed on the blue, bit tongue.

Overhead the light in silence hung,

And fiercely showed the sweaty, knotted hands

Clutching the rope about the swollen glands....

And the birds croaked and croaked, evilly eyeing

The thing so lying,

Which no commiserate pity came and cloaked,

But which soaked

The earth, so that the flies

Dizzily swung over its winkless eyes,

And in a crawling, shiny, busy brood

Blackened the sticky blood,

And tickled the tongue-choked mouth that sought to cry

Bitterly and beseechingly

Against the judgment of th’ unflinching sky.

The poor dead, lonely thing had not a shroud

From that still, frightful glare until a cloud

Of darkness, flowing like a dye

Over the edges of the sky,

Browned and put out the silent sun:

A benison

Of three hours’ space.

And it had power

To put a shadow into that thing's face,

And th’ invisible birds fell silent by its grace.

Thus Judas lay in shadow and all was still....

Then faint light, like water, began again to fill

The sky, and a whisper — came it from the grass,

Whispering dry and sparse,

Or from the air beyond the neighbouring hill?—

Ebbed, as a spirit on a sigh

Passing beyond alarm:

“It is finished!”

And there was calm

Under the empty tree and in the brightening sky.