Night’s Mardi Gras

Edward J. Wheeler: born at Cleveland, Ohio, March 11, 1859. Graduated from Wesleyan University in Ohio in 1879. His university conferred upon him the degree of Litt.D. in 1905. Mr. Wheeler was one of the leading journalists of America, having been editor of the "Literary Digest" from 1895 to 1905 and of "Current Literature" after that. He was also literary editor of Funk and Wagnalls Company, Publishers. Mr. Wheeler was one of the founders of the Poetry Society of America in 1909.
Source: poetryX

The British Council is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Double-click on any word and see its definition from Cambridge Dictionaries Online.

Read the poem below and then do a vocabulary activity. When you have finished, do some writing yourself.

night's mardi gras

Night is the true democracy. When day
Like some great monarch with his train has passed,
In regal pomp and splendor to the last,
The stars troop forth along the Milky Way,
A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray,
On heaven’s broad boulevard in pageants vast.
And things of earth, the hunted and outcast,
Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea,
Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind
Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start,
And spectres of dead joy, that shun the light,
And impotent regrets and terrors blind,
Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part
In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night.

Your turn

Write a poem or a story about a festival. Send it to us.