Page:Barham Beach - a poem of regeneration.djvu/46

42 But as Louise sat lost in thought, and from her loosened clasp Let the child settle to the sand in deep and deeper sleep, And let fierce Recollection’s fearsome fleshless hand unhasp Pandora’s box where horrid thoughts did dart and crawl and creep, Oh, to Louise it seemed the worst wild imp of all the horde The blackest bottom drop of sweltered venom e’en was this, The wonder, the amaze that he, her master and her lord, Who years ago had sealed her his with a long lover’s kiss, That he, even he whom she had sworn to honor as her Head, Who seemed in sooth a hero girt with lightnings high and dread, Her sovereign, prince, director, next to very God indeed, Was an ignoble mongrel cur of a detested breed ! Tis pitiful when desperate and faint a man will clutch At bread or fruit or food s equivalent, a bit of gold; We pardon the white wretch s crime, for Nature will do much To keep the soul embodied and the starving body souled; But when for mere externals, luxuries and baubles vain, For the vile froth and spittle of the sick inglorious time, For refuse which philosophers and poets but disdain, When for this outward scum of life a man in filth and grime Doth steep himself, what single palliation may be made? That right is right and wrong is wrong we surely know; but yet,