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I CLIMBED one night the winding flight
To a medical student's room;
A place that is drear and sombre and queer,
And full of unearthly gloom.
On his table there lay a volume of Gray,
A work on the human frame,
Which was bound, not in calf, but the skin they call scarf,
From an Ethiop's biceps that came.
The grinning skull of a yellow Mongol
Above his head was set,
Which all the world's plaudits from its empty orbits
With a look of derision met.
As if it would say to the thoughtless and gay,
"Make the most of your pleasures, my lad;
In a very short while you will change that smile
For a leer that is ghastly and sad."
A human heart, transfixed with a dart,
Preserved in a bottle was shown, -
A heart with a story, which little of glory
And much of sorrow had known.
And the foot of a Jew of an ebony hue,
Injected with acid carbolic,
Which is said to preserve every tissue and nerve
With an odor that's quite diabolic.
As I left my friend, and turned to wend
My lonesome homeward way,
A peal of loud laughter came following after,
And a voice that was merry and gay, -
"Those horrors of thine are all in thy mind;
The room has none for me;
The flesh and the bones are but dry dust and stones.
You view them too curiously."
H. H., '76.
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