SOUL TO SOUL, IN HELL
This damns our souls, this keeps us ever apart,
Apart from life and blue seas and the sun,
This,—that we slew an ever-trusting heart:
This damns us,—this vast evil we have done.
We,—you and I who in this weary hell
Gaze at each other with love-lacking eyes,—
Had once the chance to do supremely well,
Yet did supremely, foully, otherwise.
In seeking love, we lied to love. We lied
Each to the other, when we lied to her.
She might have climbed to heaven's heights at our side:
We trod her into hell. Did we not err?
Did we not sin beyond all mortal thought,
Beyond redemption, in our ghastly dream?
We longed to crown ourselves. A crown we wrought;
But with her blood its hellish blossoms gleam!
That was our love, our passion—to create
An endless sorrow for a child to bear:
To make our “love” to her seem Satan's hate:
To turn her trust to limitless despair.
This was our love, our worship of the Lord.
And lo! the Lord in whose high name we swore
Stood in our pathway with a fiery sword
And barred us back from Eden evermore.
So great we were,—in our own thought so grand!
So far above, beyond, the vulgar throng!
And yet the humblest heart in all the land
Would not have done a child this deadly wrong.
We thought to win each other,—and our doom
Is endless separation, endless loss.
Our bridal-chamber changes to a tomb
Which holds the form we nailed upon her cross.
