The Morgue at Paris. The Last Scene of a Tragedy. — Image by © CORBIS

LA MORGUE

La Morgue in the heart of Paris.

Like a worm in the heart of a rose.

Tawdry, shameless and sordid ; a temple of unloved dead.

Where the travesty of human life is exalted.

Where the Seine and the slum cast up their nameless offering to the

unhallowed alters.

Behind this soiled curtain-this flimsy insufficiency that

hangs between the street urchin and the unthinkable-there

surely dwells a demon god, watchful,  insatiate, ministered to

by lust, disease and design.

Who are all these men and women and babes, labelled,

exposed, these terrible wares displayed behind the plate-

glass window ?

This is the Chapelle Ardente of murder and suicide, where

pity is drowned in the horror, prayer in stupefaction.

And over the way, rising devout from the dust, Our Lady

of Paris lifts her stately head and points with jewelled fingers

to God’s immaculate blue sky.

 – by: Millicent Von Boeselager (ca. early 1900’s)

– altered by Hystoria