Page:Songs of the Springtides - Swinburne (1880).pdf/136

 Plies lust with wine and meat, With offering of an old man and a child, With holy body and blood, inexpiable Communion in the sacrament of hell, Till, reeking from their monstrous eucharist, The lips wax cold that murdered where they kissed, And empire in mid feast Fall as a slaughtered beast Headless, and ease men's hungering hearts of fear Lest God were none in heaven, to see nor hear, And purge his own pollution with the flood Poured of his black base blood So first found healing, poisonous as it poured; And on the clouds the archangel cleanse his sword.

As at the word unutterable that made Of day and night division, From vision on to vision,