Sir Beelzebub pulls by the scruff

His little black puppets who grin at the sky,

And with a backhander in the head like a kick,

Makes them dance, dance, to an old Carol-tune !
And the puppets, shaken about,
entwine their thin arms:

Their breasts pierced with light,
like black organ-pipes

Which once gentle ladies pressed to their own,

Jostle together protractedly in hideous love-making.
Hurray ! the gay dancers,
you whose bellies are gone !

You can cut capers on such a long stage ! 

Hop ! never mind whether it's fighting or dancing !

Beelzebub, maddened, saws on his fiddle !
Hurrah !
Beelzebub, maddened, saws on his fiddle !
Hurrah !
the wind whistles at the skeletons' grand ball !

The black gallows moans like an organ of iron !

The wolves howl back from the violet forests:

And on the horizon the sky is hell-red...
Oh ! but see how from the middle of this
Dance of Death

Springs into the red sky a great skeleton, mad,

Carried away by his own impetus,
like a rearing horse:

And, feeling the rope tight again round his neck,
Clenches his knuckles on his thighbone
with a crack

Uttering cries like mocking laughter,

And then like a mountebank into his booth,

Skips back into the dance to the music of the bones !
On the black gallows, one-armed friend,

The paladins are dancing, dancing

The lean, the devil's paladins

The skeletons of Saladins.