Our law and our
religion
call thee
A punishment and a reward.
A punishment and a reward.
Shelley
something which shall make
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
In the dread lightning which avenges it;
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying _90
The consequence of what it cannot cure.
Some such thing is to be endured or done:
When I know what, I shall be still and calm,
And never anything will move me more.
But now! --O blood, which art my father's blood, _95
Circling through these contaminated veins,
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
Could wash away the crime, and punishment
By which I suffer. . . no, that cannot be!
Many might doubt there were a God above _100
Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
LUCRETIA:
It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,
Hide not in proud impenetrable grief _105
Thy sufferings from my fear.
BEATRICE:
I hide them not.
What are the words which yon would have me speak?
I, who can feign no image in my mind
Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up _110
In its own formless horror: of all words,
That minister to mortal intercourse,
Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery: if another ever knew
Aught like to it, she died as I will die, _115
And left it, as I must, without a name.
Death, Death!
Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward. . . Oh, which
Have I deserved?
LUCRETIA:
The peace of innocence;
Till in your season you be called to heaven. _120
Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads to immortality.
BEATRICE:
Ay, death. . . _125
The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
If I must live day after day, and keep
These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,
As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest _130
May mock Thee, unavenged. . . it shall not be!
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
In the dread lightning which avenges it;
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying _90
The consequence of what it cannot cure.
Some such thing is to be endured or done:
When I know what, I shall be still and calm,
And never anything will move me more.
But now! --O blood, which art my father's blood, _95
Circling through these contaminated veins,
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
Could wash away the crime, and punishment
By which I suffer. . . no, that cannot be!
Many might doubt there were a God above _100
Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
LUCRETIA:
It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,
Hide not in proud impenetrable grief _105
Thy sufferings from my fear.
BEATRICE:
I hide them not.
What are the words which yon would have me speak?
I, who can feign no image in my mind
Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up _110
In its own formless horror: of all words,
That minister to mortal intercourse,
Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery: if another ever knew
Aught like to it, she died as I will die, _115
And left it, as I must, without a name.
Death, Death!
Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward. . . Oh, which
Have I deserved?
LUCRETIA:
The peace of innocence;
Till in your season you be called to heaven. _120
Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads to immortality.
BEATRICE:
Ay, death. . . _125
The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
If I must live day after day, and keep
These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,
As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest _130
May mock Thee, unavenged. . . it shall not be!
