The Winged Beetle

134 ROSA DECIDUA All understanding, that it bleeds again As a corpse should bleed at the murderer’s touch ! Then, not content, she must needs smutch All my past purifying pain, Turning all life to a thing fouler than Aught yet imaginable to man ! Who asks me for my tears ? She flings the body of my sweet dead child Into my face with hell’s own epitaph, Profanes that shrine Of infinite love and infinite loss, My empty shrine, the one shrine undefiled, My one close-claspèd cross— And hers as much as mine ! Profanes it with a hideous laugh And a lie flung with a curse ; and I must hear, And must not stamp on the snake, because, forsooth This was my love, my peace, my faith, my truth, The rosebud of my youth ! It was—it is not—it can never be. This would corrupt God’s body with a breath. I see Him sicken and swoon ; I see Him rot Through, though His tabernacle be Eternity. This makes a man catch hold of death Greedily like a harlot in the street That plucks by the arm some sot. Death shakes me off with a hoarse curse. Tied to this woman, his beneficence