Lucretius–those same eyes, grey Furies wear them,
They seethe in double dullness ’neath their own!
Thus muttered she in dread : he glaring lay:
Passion had made him beast, and passion sated
Did leave him than the beasts more bestial.
Till phantomed reason fled his turning brain
And with a cry he struck her from his breast,
Heavily, and her hair, like the finger of night,
Pencilled the marble as she fell, and cried:
Kill me not, devil: off, blood-searching hands;
Nay, strike me thus–and rend me thus, and thus:
I would not be the mother of mad children.
Burst forth, my blood, burst forth from wound and weal.
The body’s pain is blister for the soul’s.
Then, as her anguish slumbered for awhile:
Oh for a word of consolation dear
Sadder than dirge from old Simonides,
Sweeter than echoes of the Linos song
Whispering through the drowsy sheaves of corn
On summer evenings, when the harvesters
Homeward return, and children rush to greet
Their father, and to snatch the kisses first–
12
