Do you question the sun that it gives its gold? Do you scowl at the cloud when it pours its rain Till the fields that were withered and burnt and old Are fresh and tender and young again? Do you search the source of the breeze that sweeps The rush of the fever from tortured brain? Do you ask whence the perfume that round you creeps When your soul is wrought to the quick with pain? She was my Sun, my Dew, my Air, The highest, the purest, the holiest; =Peace=--was the shade of her beautiful hair, =Love=--was all that I knew on her breast! Would you have me forget? Or remembering Say that her love had bloomed from Hell? Then =Blessed be Hell=! And let Heaven sing "_Te Deum laudamus_," until it swell And ring and roll to the utterest earth, That the damned are free,--since out of sin Came the whiteness that shamed all ransomed worth Till God opened the gates, saying "Enter in!" * * * * * What! In the face of the witness I bear To her measureless love and her purity, Still of your hate would you make me to share, Despising that she gave life to me? You would have me stand at her helpless grave, To dig through its earth with a venomed dart! This is Honor! and Right! and Brave! To fling a stone at her pulseless heart! This is Virtue! To blast the lips Speechless beneath the Silence dread! To lash with Slander's scorpion whips The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead! * * * * * God! I turn to an adder now! Back upon you I hurl your scorn! Bind the scarlet upon your brow! _Ye_ it is, who are "bastard born"! Touch me not! These hands of mine Despise your fairness--the leper's white! Tanned and hardened and black with grime, They are clean beside your souls to-night! Basely born! 'Tis ye are base! Ye who would guerdon holy trust With slavish law to a tyrant race, To sow the earth with the seed of lust. Base! By Heaven! Prate of peace, When your garments are red with the stain of wars. Reeling with passion's mad release By your sickly gaslight damn the stars! Blurred with wine ye behold the snow Smirched with the foulness that blots within! What of purity can ye know, Ye ten-fold children of Hell and Sin? Ye to judge her! Ye to cast The stone of wrath from your house of glass! Know ye the Law, that ye dare to blast The bell of gold with your clanging brass? Know ye the harvest the reapers reap Who drop in the furrow the seed of scorn? Out of this anguish ye harrow deep, Ripens the sentence: "_Ye_, bastard born!"