So that not fainting, but refresht and astonisht
And strangely spirited and divinely angry
My body may arise out of its passion,
Out of being enjoyed by this fiend's flesh.
Then man my arm; then let mine own revenge
Utter thy vengeance, Lord, as speech doth meaning;
Yea, with hate empower me to say bravely
The glittering word that even now thy mind
Purposes, God,--the swift stroke of a falchion!
_Holofernes_.
Woman, beloved, why art thou fixt so long
Kneeling and downward crookt, and in thy hair
Darkened?--Ah, thy shoulders urging shape
Of loveliness into thy hair's pouring gleam!
_Judith_.
Needs must I pray my Jewish God for help
Against my bridal joys. For I do fear them.
_Holofernes_.
I also: these are the joys that fear doth own.
IV
_At the Gate of Bethulia. On the walls, on either side of
the Gate, are citizens watching the Assyrian camp;_
OZIAS _also, standing by himself_.
_Ozias_.
When wilt thou cure thyself, spirit of the earth,
When wilt thou cure thyself of thy long fever,
That so insanely doth ferment in thee?--
'Tis not man only: the whole blood of life
Is fever'd with desire. But as the brain,
Being lord of the body, is served by blood
So well that a hidden canker in the flesh
May send, continuous as a usury,
Its breeding venom upward, till in the brain
It vapour into enormity of dreaming:
So man is lord of life upon the earth;
And like a hastening blood his nature wells
Up out of the beasts below him, they the flesh
And he the brain, they serving him with blood;
And blood so loaden with brute lust of being
It steams the conscious leisure of man's thought
With an immense phantasma of desire,
An unsubduable dream of unknown pleasure;
Which he sends hungering forth into the world,
But never satisfied returns to him.
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