Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/61

Rh O what a sight to blast an angel's eyes

It was! the den and lair of the red strife,

The slaughter gaping from ten thousand wounds,

While like a monster on the gory floor

Life sits and gorges, half-alive, half-dead,

On its own entrails slaking its fierce lust!

There is his hostelry and mortal lodge;

There must he sleep, and there must dream and wake,

And knead his being of the crimson spume.

Cursèd he was before he saw the sun.

'Thy life is murder,' Nature shrieks to him;

'O born of carnage and to havoc doomed,

My child thou art,' she cries, 'my prey to be;

Thy blood pollution is, thy breath decay;

Thee, too, my brute necessity compels;

Harken my wisdom, o'er all time that was,

As on the gates of life, my legend graved,

Thy body its incarnate victory:

Red is the eagle's claw, the lion's fang;

Red is thy father's sword, thy foeman's spear;

Kill, eat and die, for this my empire is.'

He heard; and sorrow with immortal birth,

First sorrow, cleft his brain; within him seethed

The working of old time and heavy fate,

Growing imbruted to the thing he is;