Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/114

 So he believed that he should purify His body, till the sin of it should die, And the unfailing spirit and great word Of One—who is too bright to be beheld, And in his speech too fearful to be heard By mortal man—should come down and be held In him as in those holy ones of eld.

And to believe in this was rapture more Than any that the thought of living bore To tempt him: so the pleasant days of youth Were but the days of striving and of prayer; And all the beauty of those days, forsooth, He counted as an evil or a snare, And would have left it in the desert there.

Ah, spite of all the scourges that had bit So fiercely his fair body, branding it With many a painful over-written vow Of perfect sanctity—what man shall say How often, weak with groanings, he would bow Before the angels of the place, and pray That all his body might consume away?