THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS
83
THE WIFE-BEATER
I BRUISED your body with the whip:
Its wheals stand out in ridgéd azure.
The savage blood upon your lip
Images hurt, and hurt’s erasure.
The pain transmuted
into passion;
And passion’s min was not pain;
But my pain wears another fashion;
My dead men do not rise again.
You hurt me, and the silent skin
Whispers
no word of bleeding bruises;
Your subtle hate, your cunning
sin
Brands and corrodes me where it chooses.
I fear not them that kill the body,
But rather them that hurt the soul:
My soul with your disdain is bloody;
Your stripes are none to make me whole.
Could you but see my vitals torn,
My nerves on rack, my tortured spirit—
Of all the ills to mortals born
This is the sorest to inherit.
If you could see the branded token
Of your invisible
whip, the scars
Of your intangible
knife, the unspoken
Agonies,
silent as the stars!
Then you should count the agéd lines
That wrinkle
up my boy’s blithe beauty :~—
The Judge of all the Earth divines
My wrongs and yours, and does his duty.