For there where I bowed down
In my boastful agony,
I thought of thy cross and crown—
O Christ! I remembered thee.
VII—LOVE'S CRUELTY
"And this, then, is thy love," I hear thee say,
"And dost thou love, and canst thou torture so?
Ah, spare me, if thou lov'st me, this last woe!"
But I am not my own; I must obey
My master; I am slave to Love; his sway
Is cruel as the grave. When he says Go!
I go; when he says Come! I come. I know
No law but his. When he says Slay! I slay.
As cruel as the grave? Yes—crueler:
Cruel as light that pours its stinging flood
Across the dark, and makes an anguished stir
Of life; cruel as life that sends through blood
Of mortal the immortal pang and spur;
Cruel as thy remorseless maidenhood.
INTERLUDE
The cloud was thick that hid the sun from sight
And over all a shadowy roof outspread,
Making the day dim with another night—
Not dark like that which past, but O, more dread
For the clear sunlight that had gone before
And prophecy of that which yet should be.
Like snow at night the wind-blown hills of sand
Shone with an inward gleam far down the land:
Beneath the lowering sky black was the sea
Across whose waves a bird came flying low,—
Borne swift on the wind with wing-beat halt and slow,—
