IV
Yea! but we love. We win. The body’s curse
Is bitter, but he hath not won the whole.
There’s more than life in this brave universe.
Death cannot touch the secret of the soul!
Nor shall we shrink, although this further pang
Strike through the liver with its fiery dart,
The hope — the horrid hope — whose gleaming fang
Now stirs, a serpent’s, underneath your heart!
For lo! not vainly we invoked the god
That looseneth the girdle of a maid;
Even now draws nigh the dreadful period
That maketh all the mother-world afraid.
With rotten fruit your belly is grown big
— Thanks to the bastard god that cursed the fig? :
V
Your swollen neck is grown a swollen breast
Gushing with poisoned milk ; your breathis caught
In quick sharp gasps; you get nor sleep nor rest,
The monster moving in you in his sport.
Surely a monster! some unnatural thing,
Some Minotaur of shame, no egg of pride
To hatch the miniature of love and spring
In your own image, subtly glorified.
White swan you were! not Zeus but Cerberus
Hath ravished you; you brood on harpy eggs —
Sweet sister! is the wine too sour for us?
Wehave drunk deep — nay! nay! but to the dregs!
And ail their bitterness is braver brew
Than the dull syrup of the pious crew.