BIRTHDAY ODE.
121
Plies lust with wine and meat,
With offering of an old man and a child,
With holy body and blood, inexpiable
Communion in the sacrament of hell,
Till, reeking from their monstrous eucharist,
The lips wax cold that murdered where they kissed,
And empire in mid feast
Fall as a slaughtered beast 370
Headless, and ease men's hungering hearts of fear
Lest God were none in heaven, to see nor hear,
And purge his own pollution with the flood
Poured of his black base blood
So first found healing, poisonous as it poured;
And on the clouds the archangel cleanse his sword.
As at the word unutterable that made ant. 10
Of day and night division,
From vision on to vision,
