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Page 6
Out on you priests with your false glozing
tongues,
Liars and murderers. Aye shoot your lips,
Look with your triumphing cold sidelong looks,
Take your full ease again, you've had your way.
There's one who could have saved the world from death
Sickness and sin and weepings, dead through you.
What's that to you? There's one, your purchased wretch,
Mad with the worst guilt the foul world has known,
His very prayer made sin. What's that to you?
You're very pious, you observe the law,
You have no blood-gouts on your fringe, you've caught
No unclean taint by touching death too near,
You only planned and plotted, you are pure.
You kept the high-day too, the cross was bare
When the sun set on the mere labouring day.
Oh zealous saintly rulers! holy men!
But I am only a poor common man,
And ignorant, and I must bear the curse
Of generations of lost death-struck men
Who'll cry "One came to save us, Jesus came,
But Judas took him from us." If I die
Or if I live the cry will still ring out
And shiver through and through me worse than pain -
"The world is lost, lost, left a prey to death
For ever and for ever since Christ died."
Oh me accursed! the dead shall have their graves
For ever, and the living have no hope,
Israel have no Messiah! Will not earth
Cover me in her Hades out of sight
Of all these men whose souls I have destroyed?
I've done so much for death can I not die
Body and soul, body and soul, like all;
Body and soul out of the sight of death,
That I have made the Master of the world;
Out of the sight of life and death; henceforth
Both misery to every soul that breathes?
Why I can die. Why surely I can die
Like other men. I only of the world
To have the perfect life all were to have -
And find it perfect anguish! That might be:
'Twere a rare vengeance on me, well assigned.
But death is for us all. I can have death
I'll think of it - body and soul asleep!
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A Woman Sold
Bartimaeus
Judas
Pilate
The Walk To Emmaus
A Bride
A March Night
A Messenger
A Mother's Cry
A Wedding
Afterwards
Dead Amy
Deserted
Dreaming
Glad Waves
Going
How The Brook Sings
If
In The Storm
In The Sunshine
Looking Downstairs
Mary Lost
Never Again
Night Whispers
On The Lake
On The Shore
Our Lily
Passing Away
Perjured
Safe
Shadow
Sunlight
The Blush Rose
The Gift
The Heiress' Wooer
The Hidden Wound
The Lake
The Land Of Happy Dreams
The Old Year Out
The Red Star On The Hill
The River
The Setting Star
The Shadow Of A Cloud
To And Fro
To One Of Many
Too faithful
Two Maidens |
