The lane went back to a barred gate, became defunctive in grass, a mere path scarred quietly into new grass.

There in orphic rapture he touches a dark string in his nature, and a rich defunctive music rises to the page: Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear Sparkling armada of promises draw near .

Like D. H. Lawrence, Sansom plays his defunctive music undersea on the G string of sex, but class composes the melody.

And once more, in “The Phœnix and Turtle:” “Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right.”

A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music!