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!
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!
— 120 —
