Disease of the Mind

A short Cento created from reviews of Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts (Gengangere).

A gloomy sort of ghoul

And downright dull

Dull and disgusting 

Morbid, unhealthy and disgusting 

Infects the unsuspecting

A loathsome sore unbandaged, an open drain

As foul and filthy a concoction as has ever been

Revoltingly suggestive and blasphemous 

Nauseating and menacing malodorousness

Laid on thickly as with a trowel

Positively abominable

Bent on groping for horrors by night

A piece to bring the stage into disrepute

Gross, almost putrid indecorum

A stupid old owl when the warm

Best of life

Crapulous stuff

Allowed to disgrace

Dances into his wrinkled eyes

And blinking literary carrion

With every right-thinking man and woman.

Morbid caricatures 

Contradictory in themselves

Uninteresting or abhorrent

Ugly, nasty, discordant,

A wave of human folly

Of sordid impropriety