Page:Studies in Song - Swinburne (1880).djvu/51

 To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope With starless horror: nor the God's own eye Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope, Might well endure to see the adulteress die, The husband-slayer fordone By swordstroke of her son, Unutterable, unimaginable on high, On earth abhorrent, fell Beyond all scourge of hell, Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh, Mute, sister-like, and closer clung Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue.

All these things heard and seen and sung of old, He heard and saw and sang them. Once again