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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 7
…h ! 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 …
1910 · PDF PAGE 9
ROSA DECIDUA 7 Let a man pierce my side, I warrant him nor blood nor water flows, But such a poison as Locusta never Distilled from toad, asp, viper, scorpion, Nightshade, gall, orpiment, Jews’ hearts, Old women’s tongues, by monstrous arts ; But this my poison drips, without endeavour, From the mere soul of the world’s rose ! What alchemy of hell this ronyon Venus has skill of ! Wonder that I live ! This has been like a bag-pipe drone to wail Its monotone through high, low, fast and slow. It has been like a secret cancer, Forcing all servants …
1910 · PDF PAGE 5
ROSA DECIDUA 3 My soul to say it—all a man’s Delight. Come, look at it ! This leaden skin With ochre staining its amorphous grey ; All that elastic brilliance passed away ; Minute invading wrinkles where the flesh Is soaked away by the foul thing within Her soul ; the bloom so faint and fresh Smudged to a smoky glow as one may see At sunset in the Factory lands ; the lips Thinned and their colour sickened into slate ; The eyes like common glass ; the hair’s gloss dull ; The muscles gone, all pendulous with fat ; The breath that was more sweet t…
1910 · PDF PAGE 8
…t is written : Excepting Adonai build the house, they labour In vain that build it. And Again : Excepting Adonai keep the city, The watchman watcheth but in vain. God, if there be a God, be Thou my Neighbour ; And if that God have pity, have Thou pity ! For never man was smitten as I am smitten ; Nor from Time’s yesterday to Time’s to-morrow Was there a sorrow like unto this sorrow ! How many hours was Christ upon the cross ? How many days in hell ? But I have hung From the day of infinite loss Watching her degradation into dung Three years. Th…
1910 · PDF PAGE 11
…fe that spring in me are fed Not even on the mire of her decay. They spring from other roots. Now I am cleansed of her, I am so to say A man part paralysed. One limb is dead In feeling as in motion. This remains To ask : Will all catch death—how soon ? This head Excites its miserable brains To think the word it knows by intellect To be the right word—pity ! Then reflect : “ Pitiful ! Pitiful ! most pitiful ! The pity of it ! Think of the love past, Blossoms too beautiful ! Think of the hardships conquered comrade-wise ! Think of the babe and it…