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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365919" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Demon under the Altar Stone</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">As a boy in a ruff and a surplice, gown, <br>I sang in the choir of a country town, <br>Under the eye of the Reverend Burr<br>In a church that had stood for a thousand years. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A church so old that it reeked of damp<br>From the days of an Anglo-Saxon camp, <br>They'd built their Church on a Druid site<br>To banish the wailing ghosts at night! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Romans had slaughtered the Druid priests<br>In a river of blood at a Druid Feast, <br>And still their cries could be heard on nights<br>When the moon gleamed red by the altar lights.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The beams streamed in through the leadlight glass<br>With an eerie glow that was overcast, <br>Illumined the ancient altar stone<br>That covered the Bishop of Cædmon's bones.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The slab that lay on the floor was lipp'd<br>As it covered the age-old church's crypt, <br>And there was a crack, an inch around<br>Through to the crypt there, under the ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From where I sat in the old oak pew<br>I could see the back of the altar, too, <br>And through a gap where the floor was bare<br>Were moving shadows that shouldn't be there! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The crypt had been sealed, eight hundred years<br>Since the Normans had taken the Saxon Reeves, <br>Imprisoned them down in the crypt for good<br>Then walled them in - (so I understood!) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there they suffered and there they died<br>The Shire Reeves of the countryside, <br>And no-one had ever been down there since, <br>Or disturbed their bones... for the merest glimpse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Reverend Burr was hellfire bent, <br>His sermons called to the sinners, 'Repent! '<br>He ranted and raved of a jealous God, <br>And asked why nobody reck'd his rod.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The smell of sulphur hung in the air<br>After a sermon by Reverend Burr, <br>And brimstone caught in my nostrils so<br>That I almost gagged at the horror below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One Sunday, kneeling at evensong<br>I stared at the ancient altar stone, <br>And there I saw, and to my surprise, <br>A glow that appeared to be two red eyes! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They glowed bright red, and they stared at me<br>As if I were alone in the gallery, <br>My mind was full of the vicar's gall, <br>And I felt that a demon had pawned my soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The eyes dropped down in the crypt instead<br>And shadows moved, to my mounting dread, <br>So after the service I hurried on home, <br>As far as I could from that altar stone! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A week went by, and I thought of things, <br>Convinced they must be imaginings, <br>So off I went to the choir again, <br>But just to be safe, I whispered, 'Ben! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'You see the crack in the altar stone, <br>Just tell me if I'm the only one, <br>I saw two eyes in that crack last week, <br>They scared me so much that I couldn't speak! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The vicar stood by the altar there<br>With his bulging eyes and his crazy hair<br>And he roared and he pounded his fist on down<br>'Til it shook and it rattled the altar stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He spoke of torment and endless grief, <br>For the sin of pride, and the skulking thief, <br>For the lover of all material things, <br>The women who covered their hands with rings! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Adulterers were the scourge of God<br>And would fall in the cracks of the earth, he said, <br>While those who harboured an impure thought, <br>Their hopes of heaven were set at naught.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(But all the while it was widely known <br>That the vicar had been with the widow Rowan, <br>She'd visited him at the rectory, <br>And breakfasted in the Refectory) .</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His voice rose up and the altar stone<br>Began to rumble and then to groan, <br>I felt Ben tense at the side of me<br>As the eyes rose up, as red as could be! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The eyes rose up and peered from the gloom<br>Of the crypt, long cursed by a Druid Moon, <br>The more the vicar harangued and roared, <br>The more that it rumbled under the floor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The doors blew open, the wind blew in <br>Like a storm raised up from the depths of sin, <br>The people ran for the path outside, <br>'You've raised the devil, ' the people cried.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then the floor it had opened up<br>Where the vicar stood, he had said enough! <br>Just for a moment we caught a glimpse<br>Of the thing in the crypt that we've not seen since! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">An evil demon with blood-red eyes, <br>With hands like hooks of a monstrous size, <br>And teeth that grinned in the fading gloom, <br>The vicar fell into that terrible room.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We heard him scream just once down there<br>The sound of a sinner beyond despair, <br>And then the demon went down with a drone, <br>Covered the hole with the altar stone! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That church stood empty, unused for years, <br>They said that it carried a Druid curse, <br>But who would go down to the crypt alone, <br>Or think to disturb the altar stone? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">29 June 2009</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=David+Lewis+Paget">David Lewis Paget</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365919" data-title="The Demon under the Altar Stone de David Lewis Paget" data-description="As a boy in a ruff and a surplice, gown, 
I sang in the choir of a country town, 
Under the eye of the Reverend Burr
In a church that had stood for a thousand years. 

A church so old that it reeked of damp
From the days of an Anglo-Saxon camp, 
T..."></div>
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