Skeletons Digging

I.     In anatomical designs     That hang about these dusty quays     Where books' cadavers lie and sleep     Like mummies of the ancient times,     Drawings of which the gravity     And the engraver's knowing hand,     Although the theme be less than grand,     Communicate an artistry,     One sees, which renders more intense     The horror and the mystery,     Like field-hands working wearily     Some skeletons and skinless men. II.     Out of the land you're digging there,     Obedient and woeful drones,     With all the effort of your bones,     Of all your muscles, stripped and bare,     Say, what strange harvest do you farm,     Convicts from the charnel house,     And what contractor hired you out     To fill what farmer's empty barn?     Do you (our dreadful fate seems clear     In your design) intend to show     That in the pit we may not know     The sleep we have been promised there;     Non-being will not keep its faith;     That even Death can tell a lie,     And that, Alas! eternally     It falls to us, perhaps, at death     In some anonymous retreat     To see the stubborn land is flayed     By pushing the reluctant spade     Under our bare and bleeding feet?