But does a maniac kill the frenzy in him,
When with his fists he beats the clambering fiends
That swarm against his limbs? No more did I
Kill my defilement; it was fast within me;
And like a frenzy can go out of me
And dress its hideous motions in my world.
For when I come back here, behold the thing
I murdered in the camp leaps up and yells!
The carrion Holofernes, my defilement,
Dances a triumph round me, roars and rejoices,
Quickened to hundreds of exulting lives.
_A Citizen_.
God help thee in this wildness! Are we then
As Holofernes to thee?
_Judith_.
You are naught
But the defilement that is in me now,
Rejoicing to be lodged safely within me.
You are the lust I entertained, rejoicing
To wreak itself upon my purity.
The stratagems of my ravishment you are,
Rejoicing that the will you serve has dealt
Its power on me. O, I hate you not.
You and your crying grief should have blown past
My heart like wind shaking a fasten'd casement.
But I must have you in. Myself I loathe
For opening to you, and thereby opening
To the demon which had set you on to whine
Pitiably in the porches of my spirit.
You are but noise; but he is the lust of the world,
The infinite wrong the spirit, the virgin spirit,
Must fasten against, or be for ever vile.
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