The Poetry Corner

Celaeno

By Algernon Charles Swinburne

The blind king hides his weeping eyeless head, Sick with the helpless hate and shame and awe, Till food have choked the glutted hell-bird's craw And the foul cropful creature lie as dead And soil itself with sleep and too much bread: So the man's life serves under the beast's law, And things whose spirit lives in mouth and maw Share shrieking the soul's board and soil her bed, Till man's blind spirit, their sick slave, resign Its kingdom to the priests whose souls are swine, And the scourged serf lie reddening from their rod, Discrowned, disrobed, dismantled, with lost eyes Seeking where lurks in what conjectural skies That triple-headed hound of hell their God.