The Cross

There is a place that some men know,

I cannot see the whole of it

Nor how I came there. Long ago

Flame burst out of a secret pit

Crushing the world with such a light

The day-sky fell to moonless black,

The kingly sun to hateful night

For those, once seeing, turning back:

For love so hates mortality

Which is the providence of life

She will not let it blessed be

But curses it with mortal strife,

Until beside the blinding rood

Within that world-destroying pit

-Like young wolves that have tasted blood,

Of death, men taste no more of it.

So blind, in so severe a place

(All life before in the black grave)

The last alternatives they face

Of life, without the life to save,

Being from all salvation weaned-

A stag charged both at heel and head:

Who would come back is turned a fiend

Instructed by the fiery dead.