Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/78

 I am sick of priests and forms, This rigid dry-boned refinement: As ladies’ perfumes are Obnoxious to stern natures, This miasma of a rotting god Is to me. Who has made of the forest a park? Who has changed the wolf to a dog? And put the horse in harness? And man's mind in a groove?

I heard the one spirit cry in them, "Break this metamorphosis, Disenchant my lying body; Only putrefaction is free, And I, Freedom, am not. Moses! Touch us, thou!"

There shall not be a void or calm, But a fury fill the veins of time— Whose limbs had begun to rot, Who had flattered my stupid torpor With an easy and mimic energy, And drained my veins with a paltry marvel More monstrous than battle; For the soul ached and went out dead in pleasure.