22 THE MOTHER'S TRAGEDY
Me, the sole pledge of your debaucheries,
You keep—your love, the mere maternity
You share with swine and cattle! All your care
Is duty: let the harlot cleanse herself—
Tardy repentance !—In the name of God!
Worse, you have lied, and built me up a house
Of trust in you as being truth and love,
- Who are in truth all lies, all treachery!
You made me love you as an honest man !
You watched this passion, this intolerable
Desire, this flame of hell; you fed it full,
Sunned it and watered—O my brain will snap !—
Only to blast it. Take your story back ;
Be what you will except that infamous!
For as my mother—I should spit on you!
[CORA zs at his feet grovelling. She half rises
to listen. '
Ignoble is your foul maternity,
The cattle-kinship. But the other crime
Is viler than the first one. ‘‘ Look!” you say:
“His passion threatens to defile my bed!”
And put a hideous abiding curse
On both our lives to save your modesty
From my incestuous embrace! O God!
My love is nobler—to defy the past,
Deny !—-your love is merely natural ;
Mine, against Nature, is the love Divine!
What crime is this? Thy pale Son’s martyrdom
Cleansed earth from no such vile hypocrisy
As this my mother’s. And I call thee, God,