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!