Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/89



I am crazed with whips I hear a Messiah.

The venerable man will question this.

[Overhearing.] Ill beat you more, and he'll question The scratchiness of your whining; or, may be, Thence may be born deep argument With reasons from philosophy, That this blow, taking longer, yet was but one, Or perhaps two; or that you felt this one— Arguing from the difference in your whine— Exactly, or not, like the other.

You labour hard to give pain.

[Still beating.] My pain is not to labour so.

What is this greybeard worth to you now, All his dried-up blood crumbled to dust?