The Apothecary
What shallow grave can hold The Apothecary of Madness?
Whose blood-tinged tinctures hold blasphemous prophecy and the messages of the dead;
Whose alchemies transmute life from death, and raise mute armies that thrash violently in their immortal suffering.
The moving shadow whose prayers bend mountains to knee, and reduce molehill to ravine; that sends Kings to insanity and blindness for their impudence, and crushes churches for their solidus.
Two flowers of wolfsbane,
A fist of dried wormwood,
Three fists of the sage of the seer,
One pined pod of the blasphemous trumpet,
And the blood red toadstool;
Stewed in the piss of a lamb and the blood of a drunkard.
What shallow grave can hold The Apothecary of Madness?
The headless, armless, soulless miser whose blood is the fear provoked through his countenance;
Whose reign is as eternal as the kingdom which he profanes, and the suffering which he proliferates.
Who rose from the pits before there were souls to label them such;
Who fell to the blade and sees eternal the throes of death;
Who walks still, in the ash, rubble, and remains of the conquered.
No shallow grave can hold The Apothecary, The Apothecary of Truth.
