By the dead body of Hope, the spotless lamb Thou threwest into the high priest's slaughtering-room, And by the child Despair born red therefrom As, thank the secret sire picked out to cram With spurious spawn thy misconceiving dam, Thou, like a worm from a town's common tomb, Didst creep from forth the kennel of her womb, Born to break down with catapult and ram Man's builded towers of promise, and with breath And tongue to track and hunt his hopes to death:        O, by that sweet dead body abused and slain, And by that child mismothered,—dog, by all Thy curses thou hast cursed mankind withal, With what curse shall man curse thee back again? 

      2 By the brute soul that made man's soul its food; By time grown poisonous with it; by the hate And horror of all souls not miscreate; By the hour of power that evil hath on good; And by the incognizable fatherhood Which made a whorish womb the shameful gate That opening let out loose to fawn on fate A hound half-blooded ravening for man's blood;      (What prayer but this for thee should any say, Thou dog of hell, but this that Shakespeare said?)      By night deflowered and desecrated day, That fall as one curse on one cursed head,      "Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray, That I may live to say, The dog is dead!"       1869. 

      XV MENTANA: THIRD ANNIVERSARY 1 

      Such prayers last year were put up for thy sake; What shall this year do that hath lived to see The piteous and unpitied end of thee? What moan, what cry, what clamour shall it make, Seeing as a reed breaks all thine empire break, And all thy great strength as a rotten tree, Whose branches made broad night from sea to sea, And the world shuddered when a leaf would shake? From the unknown deep wherein those prayers were heard, From the dark height of time there sounds a word, Crying, Comfort; though death ride on this red hour, Hope waits with eyes that make the morning dim, Till liberty, reclothed with love and power, Shall pass and know not if she tread on him. 

      2 The hour for which men hungered and had thirst, And dying were loth to die before it came, Is it indeed upon thee? and the lame Late foot of vengeance on thy trace accurst For years insepulchred and crimes inhearsed, For days marked red or black with blood or shame, Hath it outrun thee to tread out thy 

 Prev. P 26/28 next