Dante, "Inferno," xix. 53.
V
THE BURDEN OF AUSTRIA 1866
O daughter of pride, wasted with misery, With all the glory that thy shame put on Stripped off thy shame, O daughter of Babylon, Yea, whoso be it, yea, happy shall he be That as thou hast served us hath rewarded thee. Blessed, who throweth against war's boundary stone Thy warrior brood, and breaketh bone by bone Misrule thy son, thy daughter Tyranny. That landmark shalt thou not remove for shame, But sitting down there in a widow's weed Wail; for what fruit is now of thy red fame? Have thy sons too and daughters learnt indeed What thing it is to weep, what thing to bleed? Is it not thou that now art but a name? (ii) (ii) "A geographical expression."—Metternich of Italy.
VI LOCUSTA
Come close and see her and hearken. This is she. Stop the ways fast against the stench that nips Your nostril as it nears her. Lo, the lips That between prayer and prayer find time to be Poisonous, the hands holding a cup and key, Key of deep hell, cup whence blood reeks and drips; The loose lewd limbs, the reeling hingeless hips, The scurf that is not skin but leprosy. This haggard harlot grey of face and green With the old hand's cunning mixes her new priest The cup she mixed her Nero, stirred and spiced. She lisps of Mary and Jesus Nazarene With a tongue tuned, and head that bends to the east, Praying. There are who say she is bride of Christ.
VII CELAENO
The blind king hides his weeping eyeless head, Sick with the helpless hate and shame and awe, Till food have choked the glutted hell-bird's craw And the foul cropful creature lie as dead And soil itself with sleep and too much bread: So the man's life serves under the beast's law, And things whose spirit lives in mouth and maw Share shrieking the soul's board and soil her bed, Till man's blind spirit, their sick slave, resign Its kingdom to the priests whose souls are swine, And the scourged serf lie reddening from their rod, Discrowned, disrobed, dismantled, with lost eyes Seeking where lurks in what conjectural skies That triple-headed hound of hell their God.
VIII A CHOICE
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