Page:When the Leaves Come Out (Chaplin 1917).pdf/30

  Now a quick impotent fury
 * Lashed him like a bronze-tipped cord.
 * Sprang he at the youthful lord;

Sprang again with blade all bloody. ..
 * (Famished lust and dripping sword!)

Night crept on all chill and ghastly.
 * Jackals trotted forth to bark.
 * (Murder shuddered, still and stark . . . )

By the palace ceased the fountain
 * And the whole grey world grew dark.

  You whitened sepulchre of Christian grace;
 * You saintly, honored, holy—hideous thing!
 * You smother Truth with raucous gibbering;

You hide your rotting sores with silk and lace; You lavish loathsome gifts of gold and place
 * On whorish fools who praise you as their king—
 * Who crucify your foes while church-bells ring . ..

But blest be they who spit into your face!

Go, girt yourself with your dull panoply.
 * Make sharp with thorns the paths men ravel in.
 * Upraise your blood-cry with internal din—

You Larva of the Past, but, ah, for me,
 * How better far to live with leprous sin

Than reek and rot with your innanity! 