The Mother’s Tragedy

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,