Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/88

 Die of thy pain and my delight, and be Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee! Would I not plague thee dying overmuch? Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light? Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note, Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat, Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these A lyre of many faultless agonies? Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth, With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth, Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh, And wring thy very spirit through the flesh? Cruel? but love makes all that love him well As wise as heaven and crueller than hell. Me hath love made more bitter toward thee Than death toward man; but were I made as he Who hath made all things to break them one by one, If my feet trod upon the stars and sun And souls of men as his have alway trod, God knows I might be crueller than God. For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings The mystery of the cruelty of things? Or say what God above all gods and years With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears, With lamentation from strange lands, from graves Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves,